For adolescents blessed with willowy good looks, the fashion world offers the prospect of glamour, celebrity, and wealth. But this, for many, is what the beginning of a modeling career can actually look like:
On her first test shoot as a 15-year-old, Dasha Alexander said, a photographer held a camera in one hand and digitally penetrated her with his other — a move, he explained, that would make the pictures more “raw” and “sensual.”
When Coco Rocha refused to get naked on set as a 16-year-old, she said, the photographer replaced her with a girl who was younger and more obedient. Months later, a famous photographer simulated an orgasm as he took Rocha’s picture.
Advertisement
By the time Lenka Chubuklieva was 17, she said, an agent had repeatedly groped her, a photographer had thrown her on a bed and kissed her, and another photographer had masturbated in front of her and threatened to ruin her family in Ukraine if she told anyone.
“If people really understood what goes on behind the glamour of the industry, they would be mortified,” said Abbey Lee, an Australian model who, despite having been fondled on sets, describes herself as “one of the lucky ones.”
Emboldened by the #MeToo movement, more than 50 models spoke to the Globe Spotlight Team about sexual misconduct they experienced on the job, from inappropriate touching to assaults. Some are seeking to expose serial predators and those who enable them. Others are demanding new legal protections and calling for radical reform of a youth-obsessed industry they say has left them feeling exploited, treated like “meat” and “clothes hangers,” and, in the words of one model, “pimped out” by their agents.
Collectively, these models — predominantly females, although also males — made credible allegations of sexual misconduct against at least 25 photographers, agents, stylists, casting directors, and other industry professionals. In many instances, Spotlight reporters verified the accounts with third parties or examined records such as e-mails.
Advertisement
Some of the alleged victims were willing to talk publicly, but others spoke on condition of anonymity because they still work in fashion and fear reprisal. The Globe does not identify alleged victims of sexual misconduct without their consent.
The accused men include some of the most well-known powerbrokers in the multibillion-dollar fashion industry and were often named by multiple women — in one case, seven — for alleged sexual misconduct.
Among them: Patrick Demarchelier, who was Princess Diana’s personal photographer; David Bellemere, whose photos have appeared on the covers of Elle and Marie Claire Italy; and Greg Kadel, who has shot for mega brands like Victoria’s Secret and Vogue.
Models also identified photographers Andre Passos and Seth Sabal, who often did test shoots that models usually pay for themselves to build their portfolios, and Karl Templer, who, as one of the world’s most powerful stylists, has worked with Coach, Zara, and Tommy Hilfiger.
All of the accused men denied the allegations against them, and many complained that they can’t fully defend themselves when the Globe protects the identities of alleged victims, including by not always disclosing names, dates, and locations to them.
One photographer insisted some sexual encounters were consensual, and others said models may have misunderstood the touching and positioning that can be part of their jobs. But models say these are merely justifications for widespread abuses that have been part of the business for decades.
Advertisement
After Globe inquiries last week, Conde Nast, a media conglomerate that includes Vogue, Glamour, and GQ, said it has stopped working for now with Demarchelier and Kadel, and Victoria’s Secret said it has suspended its relationship with Kadel.
The fashion world, according to industry veterans, is rife with sexual misconduct for reasons built into the business. Models are usually minors when they enter the field, a highly sexualized adult world with little supervision and no job protections. Many Hollywood actresses, who helped start last fall’s #MeToo movement, at least have the option to join a union.
And the very nature of models’ work involves the marketing of seduction. At times, they are asked to dramatize sexual behavior they may not yet have experienced in real life. They regularly undress in front of colleagues and often appear scantily clad, sometimes with no clothes at all, to sell everything from watches to lingerie.
It is an industry, the models told the Spotlight Team, where the sexual and financial exploitation of teenagers is almost routine. Nearly 60 percent of models interviewed by the Globe said they had been touched inappropriately during work-related situations, the violations ranging from unwanted kissing to rape. Yet, for decades, victims of sexual misconduct in the fashion world have struggled to be heard and taken seriously.
Modeling, they say, may be work that accentuates their beauty and sensuality, but it is still work. “It’s a job, and just because you see a picture of me in underwear, that’s not an invitation to come to my bedroom,” said Chloe Hayward, a British model who said fending off propositions by photographers is common for her and many of her peers, especially early in their careers.
Advertisement
But models say they rarely complain, since doing so could get them labeled “difficult” and derail their professional aspirations. Still, spurred by the ongoing uprising over sexual harassment, more models are speaking out in hopes that change will finally come to their industry.
In recent weeks, model Kate Upton, famous for her appearances in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and model Miranda Vee accused Guess cofounder Paul Marciano of sexual assault, allegations that have rocked the company. He denies the accusations.
Under growing public pressure, designers and brands pledged greater protections against sexual harassment in the days leading up to New York Fashion Week, a high-profile event that ran through Friday. But the basic safeguards put into place, such as private dressing rooms so models don’t have to get naked in public, only underscore how vulnerable the models have been.
In the immediate aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal last fall, Cameron Russell, a model who grew up in Cambridge, Mass., took to Instagram to protest the widespread mistreatment of models with the hashtag #myjobshouldnotincludeabuse.
Within two days, Russell had collected hundreds of accounts of sexual misconduct. Some of the alleged predators were painfully familiar to Russell: They had victimized her in the early years of her career. Russell began posting models’ accounts on her Instagram page — keeping victims anonymous and redacting the names of the accused — and asked others to share their stories.
Advertisement
“The last 48 hours has been devastating,” Russell wrote on Instagram at the time. “We know what is happening in fashion. We tolerate it and ignore it and excuse it every day. We all know who the perpetrators are and we continue to work with them. STOP. Advertisers and magazines, stop hiring these people. Agencies, stop sending them talent. Stop today. Do not wait until lawyers get involved. Do the right thing because the wrong thing is horrific.”
Two weeks later, Vogue and its parent company, Conde Nast, banned Terry Richardson — a prominent photographer who had been dogged in the media for years by misconduct allegations, including exposing himself to models and pressing his genitals on a model’s face — from shooting for its magazines. Richardson, who is under investigation by the New York City Police Department, has denied any wrongdoing.
“It’s interesting and frustrating that now people want to finally pay attention,” said Rocha, a Canadian model who began speaking out about Richardson’s behavior roughly a decade ago after, she says, he pretended to have an orgasm as he photographed her. There are “people at the top who no doubt have heard these stories for the last 20 years,” she added, “and haven’t done anything.”
Consider the case of photographer Patrick Demarchelier, who has maintained superstar status despite allegations that he has long preyed on young women.
Russell’s Instagram posts led one of Demarchelier’s former photo assistants to write in October to Vogue editor Anna Wintour about relentless advances by Demarchelier beginning when she was a 19-year-old intern, according to an e-mail reviewed by the Globe.
As his subordinate, she told the Globe, she eventually gave in to his sexual demands, feeling that she could not continue to reject him without endangering her position. When she did resist, she said, he would later berate her on the job.
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, urged Wintour to prevent Demarchelier from having access to other young women.
“It hurts my heart so much to think of how many girls, many my own daughter’s age who have had to fend off or give in to his advances because I didn’t speak up at the time,” the woman wrote in another e-mail that was circulated to a modeling group. “I remember many test shoots with teenage girls where Patrick’s team of assistants (including me) was dismissed for the day only to find naked photos of the girl in the darkroom the next day.”
The Globe interviewed six other women who accused Demarchelier of unwanted sexual advances, including thrusting a model’s hands onto her genitals and grabbing another model’s breasts, as well as making vulgar propositions. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear career repercussions for speaking out against people with so much clout in the fashion world.
Four years ago, Demarchelier allegedly asked a teenage model, “Can I lick your pussy?” and indicated he could make her famous if she said yes. Shocked, the model, who detailed the exchange to the Spotlight Team, said no and left the Paris hotel where the shoot was supposed to take place.
“I wasn’t sure even if I understood his English correctly,” she recalled in an interview with the Globe, but then he repeated the question verbatim. “I said, ‘You should be ashamed, and I will never see you again.’ ”
About two years later, she said, she was sent to a New York City shoot with Demarchelier, despite having told her agents she no longer wanted to work with him. There, she said, he again posed the same crude question. The Globe corroborated her account with a subsequent agent.
“Everyone is trying to take advantage of you,” the model said. “At one point I was like, do I really have to do this to succeed? Do anything?”
Asked by the Globe about the various sexual misconduct allegations, Demarchelier said it was “impossible” that the multiple complaints against him were true. “People lie and they tell stories,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.” Demarchelier said he has “never, never, never” touched a model inappropriately. Noting that he is married, he called the accusations “pure lying” by models who “get frustrated if they don’t work.”
On Feb. 2, Demarchelier told a Spotlight reporter he still worked for Conde Nast. “I shoot for everybody,” he said. Conde Nast said that although the company decided in December to stop commissioning new work with Demarchelier, it didn’t officially notify him until recently. In a Feb. 10 statement, two days after being contacted by the Globe, Conde Nast said: “We have informed Patrick we will not be working with him for the foreseeable future.”
Photographers like Demarchelier wield enormous influence because they not only take pictures, but also often select which models will appear in magazines. As a result, models desperate to make money, or at least make a name for themselves, can become easy targets for men with connections to prestigious brands.
For some teenage models, it’s a traumatizing rite of passage to be sent alone to a photo shoot at the home or studio of an adult male photographer who pressures them to undress or perform a sex act. If I say no, they often wonder, is this the end of my modeling days?
Seth Sabal and Andre Passos are two of the photographers who models said exploited them when they were teenagers.
Three models have accused Sabal of sexual harassment during the mid-2000s. One of them, who asked to be identified only by her middle name, Teresa, said she was 17 when she was given alcohol and asked to take off her underwear as Sabal allegedly shot up her skirt.
An attorney for Sabal denied all the allegations and said, “At no point in time did he ever ask or force a model to do anything she was uncomfortable with, or certainly that was not his intention.” The attorney added: “Seth agrees and feels the industry is rampant with drugs, sex, and abuses of power, discrimination.”
In the case of Passos, former model Dasha Alexander said she was 15 when he inserted his fingers in her vagina while taking her picture about 20 years ago, saying it would give the photos “more emotion.”
Passos, who is living in Brazil, texted a response to a Globe reporter: “I have already suffered enough consequences out of this absurd story. . . . I was a victim as well as the model was a victim of her parents and agency to send her out in the world in such a tender age in the hands of an evil industry. An industry that never knew how [to] educate [these] girls, that only looked at profit and fame no matter what.”
Passos said he has never engaged in a sex act with a model involving his fingers. He also volunteered that he has faced charges of misconduct in the past: “I went to court for this and was not guilty,” he wrote.
Passos did not respond to questions asking what court he appeared in and the name of the victim, and the Globe could not locate any records. According to Alexander, she never told her parents about Passos’ alleged assault or went to court over it. So it is unclear whether his text message refers to a separate incident with a different model.
Male models said they have also been subjected to sexual misconduct by some of the industry’s top photographers, including Mario Testino and Bruce Weber. Several brands and magazines, including Conde Nast, Burberry, Michael Kors, and Stuart Weitzman, severed ties with one or both of the men after a New York Times story in January identified them as alleged sexual predators.
When model RJ King was 18, he said, he was sent by his former agency to a photographer’s Manhattan apartment to be considered for an upcoming job. There, with no one else present, the photographer casually offered him beer and drugs and then sexually assaulted him while he was changing his clothes, King said.
“When he finished,” King said, “it was the lowest I probably have ever felt.”
The incident, King said, left him wondering: “Is this what the industry is like? Is this what I’m going to continue to have to face?”
For many models, the answer is an emphatic and devastating yes.
Abuses can also occur when models are posing for major brands and magazines. One model said that during a shoot she was called a “whore” and “hooker” by a Dior executive, and a teenager who resisted going topless for German Vogue said the photographer suggested that a male model forcibly have sex with her to “loosen her up.”
Both companies denied any knowledge of these incidents and said they don’t tolerate sexual harassment.
Former Calvin Klein chief marketing officer Kim Vernon spoke generally about sexual misconduct: “I’m aware that it has happened in the industry and I believe all these recent measures to discuss and expose and correct the behavior are extremely important. . . . I don’t think brands have knowingly turned their head the other way.”
Ostensibly, modeling agents have a duty to safeguard their young clients from such situations. But many models say their professional shelf lives are so short that agents are more loyal to photographers and companies, forcing them to navigate troubling encounters on their own.
“Modeling agencies aren’t protecting these girls; they care more about the money,” said Carolyn Kramer, a former codirector of the Marilyn Agency in New York who now owns a Provincetown art gallery. “If you’ve got a $30 million exclusive Ralph Lauren worldwide contract available to you as a model agent, but you’ve heard rumors about the photographer being a scumbag, you’re taking a booking. You don’t care about the model. . . . I was complicit. I own up to it.”
Many models told the Globe that agents frequently remind them that legions of other attractive young people are available to take their places, including from overseas. About 20 of the models interviewed described highly exploitative relationships with their agents, who work for many of the top New York firms.
Some said their agents gave them drugs and alcohol, withheld earnings, coerced them into sexual relationships as teenagers, failed to inform them that photo shoots would require nudity, encouraged them to sleep with photographers to advance their careers, and sent them to sets with known predators, among other transgressions.
“Everyone knew the names of photographers making advances and using their power against young women,” said Trudi Tapscott, a former agent for Elite Model Management and DNA Model Management.
Tapscott said she used to warn models about certain men, but she now acknowledges that’s not as effective as saying to photographers: “ ‘We’re not going to work with you ever again.’ . . . What makes it better is getting that photographer out of the equation.”
Greg Kadel was one of the photographers whom Tapscott said she heard complaints about because he allegedly insisted that models pose nude or topless, and treated his shoots like a “personal playground.” Some models described far more extreme behavior.
One model said she hadn’t yet finished high school when her agent took her to a fashion party in New York City where adults gave her cocaine and alcohol — a vodka soda, her agent specified, because “that wouldn’t make me fat.”
At the end of the night, the model’s agent allegedly asked Kadel to put the stumbling teenager in a cab. Kadel did, but he jumped in the car, too, and directed the driver to a hotel. Once there, the model said, he pushed her against a wall, pulled off her clothes, and had sex with her. She spoke to her agent the next day.
“I told her what happened, and I was crying and upset,” the model recalled. “She convinced me that what happened was a good thing and hopefully my career would benefit from it.”
The agent also instructed her not to tell anyone because, she said, Kadel worked with major brands and magazines and complaining about him would hurt her chances of making it big.
Indeed, Kadel helped the teenager land gig after gig with Victoria’s Secret, all while subjecting her to ongoing harassment, she said, until she refused to work with him — a move that she says effectively ended her relationship with the lingerie empire.
The model, who asked that her name be withheld, confided in her boyfriend at the time about Kadel’s unwanted sexual advances, warned a modeling friend about Kadel’s behavior, and told a subsequent agent she was uncomfortable working with Kadel. All three corroborated her account, and the Globe reviewed e-mail exchanges between the model and Kadel, as well as topless photographs Kadel took of her when she was a minor.
Victoria’s Secret said it is conducting a “full third-party investigation of the allegations” and added: “We are a company that celebrates and serves women, so this behavior could not be more contrary to who we are.”
The model’s friend told the Spotlight Team that when she was a teenager she was accosted by Kadel, as well. After he photographed her for one of Vogue’s European editions at a private home, she said, she woke up in the middle of the night to find him lying on top of her, his tongue in her mouth, his hand holding hers.
The Globe interviewed two other models who requested anonymity and said Kadel made unwanted sexual advances, including kissing, when they were teenagers. A fifth model said Kadel asked her to do a private photo shoot and then pressured her to get nude, repeatedly asking her to take off her underwear during the hours-long session. All of the alleged incidents took place within the past dozen years.
Ernesto Qualizza, an agent for Kadel, vigorously denied the allegations. “Greg has never done that. He’s dated some girls and that’s happened. It’s all consensual between adults. He’s never used his power in any way that is unbecoming,” Qualizza said.
Kadel believes the encounters described to him by the Globe were consensual or “he misinterpreted a social situation” when he made a pass, according to Kadel’s attorney. The lawyer also said Kadel was working on a book and exhibition about photography and shot in hotels and private homes because they provided the atmosphere he was seeking.
A spokeswoman hired by Kadel provided additional comments, saying that Kadel “never sexually coerced or assaulted anyone in his life. As a creative professional for many years, Mr. Kadel has always accurately represented the intention or scope of his work and has always worked through a model’s agent and made sure that each model was fully aware and comfortable with the creative vision being pursued in any project before they signed on to participate.”
Then there’s David Bellemere, who gained international fame shooting for top fashion magazines. Madisyn Ritland was 19 years old and living in Paris when she wound up alone at his home for a photo shoot.