Models switching agencies. When you analyse the sentence and take it out of it contexts, it means literally nothing. When you are used to modeling business daily routine, it means a lot. What used to be rare cases in a still recent past is as common as the arrival of a new face on board.
The reasons behind such model movements are various and go from the most obvious and almost natural to the oddest. Think of managers leaving one company for another and being followed by their most loyal models and partner agents. Think of impatient girls and mother agents.
Think of money deals proposed by one agency to a model to leave her former management. And all of those still sound pretty understandable. What are the effects on careers, on business relationships, on the different markets? And doesn't it make models a little more disposable in the end, if they change agency as fast and easily?
You had Louie Chaban moving from DNA to Women a few years ago and taking some of his models with him while Chris Gay, formerly at Women, went to Marilyn at the same moment. It appeared like a shock wave back then, almost as quickly forgotten as Paul Rowland left his historical project Supreme to revamp Ford... while the former team running Ford directly headed to Supreme. Then a lot of bookers and agents left Elite for different other companies and you saw most of Elite's leading ladies leaving for Ford, Wilhelmina, Marilyn. But the story doesn't stop here, after Elite's downfall, Louie Chaban was hired to be the new head of the company and brought with him some of the models he used to manage at Women, in most cases high-level ones.
During a long time, Next was considered as the agency who literally "steals" the girls from others but suddenly experienced the opposite position. Six or seven years ago, Coco Rocha (now at Wilhelmina via Elite) and Hilary Rhoda (now at Elite via Women) were the quintessential models of Supreme and IMG, respectively. Meghan Collison, Suvi Koponen and now Alana Zimmer, were often considered as Paul Rowland's hits when he was running Supreme.
They are now at Next for the first two and the latter joined Women this summer, while Rowland's board at Ford looks like a patchwork of new faces and models taken from DNA, Elite or Next. Feeling dizzy reading this? I would understand, I felt dizzy writing it. The previous paragraph basically described the situation in New York and a lot of these moves are directly related to some agents' moves. Many are also linked to successful models who remained loyal to their manager or, at least, it looks so when you watch it sitting at your computer.
Movements have always existed and, in the past, the targets were rather promising new faces than big names following their agent. Everyone remembers rising stars who started their career at some smaller agencies (or weaker, as some would say) and quickly moved to IMG, Next or Women after their first successes. Whether those were smart moves or not can't be summed up easily. For some of them, it worked perfectly well while others quickly vanished.
Some odd moves aren't rare these days as well. Models who saw their career getting slower and slower suddenly pop up at another agency, or new faces who haven't even started jump from one board to another. Sometimes, you have to keep in mind models are also switching mother agencies, Eastern Europe and Brazil are probably the parts of the world where such things most frequently happen. And usually, such moves are followed by other moves in main markets as the new mother agent doesn't have the same partners.
Last but not least, you also see models purely and simply leaving their mother agent to replace it by their managers in Paris, New York etc. When you put all these cases together, it might look like traffic jam. Dense, messy, noisy and, in the end, nothing truly moves forward. If some agency changes were the best decision ever for some models' careers (Ginta Lapina moving from a commercial agency to Women, Querelle Jansen being relaunched by New York Models and Nathalie), a lot of the recent moves were pretty random and not always profitable.
Mother agents are suffering from this "trend" when they didn't limit their role to finding the girl and gave her huge support when she needed it most. We can perfectly imagine a small company from a small country does not want to invest much anymore if they are totally unsure to see a return one day. But mother agencies aren't the only ones to be hurt. Models themselves are probably the first ones to experience the damages.
Their worker status doesn't offer them a lot of protection and the surpopulation of new faces has made them more disposable than ever, a lot of them are making debts faster than money and disappear from the radar due to financial troubles. If their management and agency are changing as fast as you change your underwear, will it really help them to build safer careers and expect a little more longevity in this business?
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