Fashion week photographs of Kate Moss or Agyness Deyn sashaying down the catwalk in the latest season’s designs appear in magazines and on front pages around the world. Yet look more closely and it appears that few of these images are taken at London Fashion Week.
Many of the most talked-about models of the moment — some household names, some the next big thing — will appear at fashion weeks in New York, Paris and Milan, but not London. Some fly in for a day or two, others skip London completely. Industry figures say London has a lot going for it: creativity, innovation, cool. But compared with the other capitals, it doesn’t have the financial clout to attract the “hottest” models.
Is this damaging London’s fashion reputation?
“A lot of things have gone wrong with fashion weeks,” says Carole White, the founder of Premier models. “It’s causing a problem for the British fashion industry. London designers are not realistic about what they pay. Their rates have not moved on since 1983.” She says London offers models only a fraction of the fees they can command elsewhere.
White knows what she is talking about. The workaholic, outspoken star of Channel 4 TV’s fly-on-the-wall documentary The Model Agency is the woman Naomi Campbell called “mum” for years (until they had a big falling out). She has represented the likes of Claudia Schiffer and Christy Turlington as well as famously turning down Kate Moss for being “too short.”
The London “squeeze” has been debated since New York, due to start tomorrow, moved its position in the schedule. New York is traditionally seen as more powerful than London, which is how the change was pushed through two years ago. “Since New York got moved to the first slot, all the fashion weeks butt up against each other. It’s crazy.” White warns that some of the most in-demand models may struggle to make it to London, which opens on Sept. 16.
It makes more sense for them to jet straight from New York to Milan. “There is a lot of politics going on here. They seem to think it helps the buyers. But it doesn’t help the models.”
Aidan Jean-Marie, creative director of Premier and one of White’s bookers, says: “Big names like Kate Moss or Stella Tennant, they make their guest appearances elsewhere. We don’t have the money in London any more.”
Last season one of the most memorable photographs from the shows was Kate Moss swishing down the runway in a rare catwalk appearance. That was for Louis Vuitton in Paris. But this isn’t so much about household names (many of these models no longer do catwalk work anyway as advertising is so much more lucrative). It’s about the young women who suddenly become “the latest big thing” on the eve of these shows. The model bookers argue that these “hot girls” (as they call them) are what creates the noise around a collection.
“The buzz of London is the creativity,” White says. “And you want the best models to showcase that. They don’t have to be the most famous, but they have to be the coolest. If a girl is really tired and looks like she’s going to have a really good show season in Milan, the agents will say, ‘Let’s skip London.’ It tends to lessen us as a market.”
For the models, London is apparently not that appealing: “Most girls are not avaricious. They want to cover their costs and make a little profit. But in London they can leave with a debt and have to return the next season to clear it.”
