Tag: models

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Business Law Employment & Labor General / Musings

Model Behavior

In September, 2017, LVMH and Kering jointly adopted “The Charter on the Working Relations with Fashion Models and Their Well-Being.” It was created following consultation with key external players, such as casting directors, stylists, models and modeling agencies. Intended to help improve working conditions for models, the charter seeks to apply standards of conduct to the signatory companies and to their external contractors, such as modeling agencies, worldwide. A monitoring committee will meet with brands regularly to assess compliance.Key provisions of the charter require compliance with the following:

  • Cast only female models for adult clothing who are at least French size 34 (US size 2) and only male models who are at least French size 44 (US size 34).
  • Require a valid medical certificate from each model, attesting to good health and ability to work.
  • Have a dedicated psychologist or therapist at the models’ disposal during work hours.
  • On the sometimes-difficult topic of nudity and semi-nudity, the charter is refreshingly frank: it will be allowed only with written consent of the model and parent/legal representative if under the age of eighteen. For all, there must be comfortable room temperatures and private changing zone, and the model may not be left alone with the photographer or other person connected with the production.
  • No hiring of models under the age of sixteen for photoshoots or shows in which the model would be called upon to represent an adult and, for those models aged sixteen to eighteen, a restriction of work hours to 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
  • Provide food and drinks that comply with the models’ dietary needs. Alcohol is not permitted, with limited exceptions.
  • Establishment of a grievance system (such as a hotline). Brands have the right to make unannounced inspections.

As leading multi-brand companies based in the world’s fashion capital, LVMH and Kering are positioned to make a global industry-wide impact with the charter. By extending enforcement by their brands to external contractors (such as modeling agencies) the companies are using their collective power potentially to cause change throughout the fashion business. LVMH and Kering have invited other brands to sign the charter. Antoine Arnault, a member of the LVMH board of directors and the CEO of its Berluti men’s footwear brand, has expressed his belief that, “[other brands] will have to comply because models will not accept being treated certain ways by [some] brands and another way with others.”[1]

Within less than a year following the announcement of its adoption, the charter is bringing change throughout the fashion business by, in part, influencing others in the field to adopt similar measures to promote improved working conditions for models. ELLE and Version Fémina magazines signed onto the charter. Condé Nast and Tapestry Inc. – the parent company of Coach and Kate Spade – each released their own standards of conduct for models, and Elite Models is expected soon to follow.

Katie Grand, editor-in-chief of Love magazine, expressed to Women’s Wear Daily that learning about the LVMH/Kering Charter made her “mindful that models need to change in private.”[2]

In February of this year, LVMH and Kering Group further demonstrated their commitment to the charter by launching www.wecareformodels.com, a website that is intended to provide models with access to advice from expert nutritionists, psychologists, and other professionals in the fields of mental and physical health.

Previously, the Council of Fashion Designers of America had implemented health initiatives and guidelines to promote wellness and healthier working environments for models. The initiatives were not about policing brands but were intended to raise awareness and promote education. The LVMH/Kering charter differs in that the companies have implemented the policy and are self-monitoring. But it is more: the charter does not function merely as a set of corporate guidelines but as rules of conduct for all participants in corporate projects in which models are involved. The founders of the charter have stated clearly that, if any external partner should fail to comply with the charter, they will sever their relationship with it.

Although the charter is not legislation, it is important to recognize that its medical certification requirement is in line with the EU labor laws for fashion models that were implemented in October 2017, only a month after the adoption of the charter. The charter’s age-specific rules for models under age 16 are in accordance with New York child performer laws that require special considerations for underage models, including restricted working hours, mandatory breaks, and school attendance obligations.[3] In short, the charter is current on where the law has been headed internationally, and it is quite possible that showing compliance with the charter could have bearing on judicial thinking, particularly on questions of liability and in any potential damages awards, in future actions concerning treatment of models.

Will the charter create a new norm for the modeling industry? The fashion business has shown that, while styles change quickly, patterns of behavior generally change far more slowly; but for models, some change appears to be coming at last.

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[1] Osman Ahmed, A New Charter Aims to End Model Abuse: Will it Work?, The Business of Fashion (Sept. 7, 2017), https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/lvmh-kering-model-charter-will-it-work.

[2] Rosemary Feitelberg & Lisa Lockwood, Next Steps: How to Cure Fashion’s Model Scandal, Women’s Wear Daily (Mar. 26, 2018), http://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/fashion-reaction-french-law-skinny-models-10302035/.

[3] Nora Crotty, New York Signs Law Protecting Child Models’ Labor Rights, Fashionista (June 27, 2018), https://fashionista.com/2013/10/new-york-signs-law-protecting-child-models-labor-rights.

Credit:  Gloria Kim | Guest Post

Gloria Kim begins her third year at the Fordham University School of Law in the fall of 2018. Gloria has worked at Ralph Lauren as a wholesale planner and at Louis Vuitton as a legal intern. She is an active participant in the school’s Fashion Law Institute and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia.

Categories
General / Musings Menswear

A Belly Full of Good Fashion

Shirtless sexy male model lying alone on his bed

As everyone knows, male fashion lawyers tend to be hunks. I was a bit late getting the memo, but on the insistence by my German doctor, I finally started exercising, and being German myself, I of course overdid it, to the point that my shirt maker (Turnbull & Asser) had to adjust my pattern and my tailor (Henry Poole) is on notice that it will need do the same. Because both usually expect rounding middles by the time customers reach my point in life, that made me feel quite good. But what I next sought to do in the name of fashion was of no concern to either of them.

It would be hard not to notice that the trend is for less body hair on men. When I was growing up, what was said about something that toughened you as a man (such as strong drink) was, “That will put a little hair on your chest.” Nature dutifully made me quite fashionable in that regard, but since that time, things have regrettably slid the other way. Beefy young men in fashion advertising display pectorals and abdominals as furless as a those of a baby. One recent print ad showed a pack of lovely women measuring every inch of a young man wearing only his undershorts and showing not a blade of hair below his perfectly formed cranium.

Would that real life were as equally correctable in Photoshop. Instead, off went this hirsute attorney in search of a more practical solution, which is how I ended up at Olga’s laser emporium. A slave to tradition, I decided to keep the hair on my chest, but I agreed to sacrifice all between the sternum and what Olga told me was my “bikini line.” She first shaved my abdomen, thereby defoliating that previously forested tract that no one had seen since I put on my bar mitzvah suit. Then she set her laser to work, and after a twelve-minute ordeal in which I felt like the target at a flame-thrower practice range, I stood up and had a look.

To my surprise, what had lay hidden under that vanquished mat of virility was, after daily workouts, a surprisingly pleasing set of washboard abs—not quite a six-pack, but something like a four-pack on its way toward picking up the two missing cans. There you go, I thought: a fashionable belly at last. The problem is that there are not that many venues in which a fashion lawyer gets to show how fashionably toned he has become. Going shirtless in the firm’s boardroom seemed not quite in keeping with our mission. I suppose I could arrive at a fashion show with my shirt as open as Keith Richards’, but that style just does not speak to me. I do not even swim topless anymore but wear a rash guard (swim shirt) with an SPF of 50. So I have done what women have done for millennia: I have suffered for beauty—beauty that must, in a guy’s case, remain both skin deep and out of view.

At least my doctor is pleased. As I lay on the examination table, she kneaded and pounded my abdomen as though hoping to strike oil and said, “Very tight. There are two possible explanations. Either you are finally exercising as I told you to do—or you have serious liver damage.”

In fashion, nothing worthwhile comes easy.

Credit: Alan Behr

Categories
General / Musings Womenswear

Those Empty Young Eyes

young elegant fashion model staring into camera

Recently, in American Photo, the photographer Robert Polidori reflected on the things he does not like about fashion photography: “One is the psychological stance. Eyes are the window to the soul, or at least to the psychological state. In the great majority of fashion photography in the past, say, 40 to 50 years, they have zombielike eyes. They look at the viewer-or at the photographer, who is the metaphor for the viewer-to-be—like, ‘I’m not looking at you. I do not value you.’ There’s a sense of denial that runs through it. I always wondered, why does denial sell clothes?”

As both a fashion lawyer and as a photographer, that touched a nerve with me. That empty stare of models in both advertising and editorial shoots has been a staple of fashion photography for about as long as Polidori suggests. It goes back at least as far as the “Sighs and Whispers” lingerie brochure photographed for Bloomingdale’s in 1976 by Guy Bourdin. Immediately controversial, it featured models looking lovely and catatonic in their perfect underwear. (I actually have a copy of that small but groundbreaking piece stored safely somewhere.)

The alternative to the blank eyes is the downright threatening “go thither” stare—as if the beautiful woman is either daring you to admire her and her clothes or pitying you for hoping ever to match her. As your basic straight and clueless guy (adjectives that, I am reliably told, are redundant in context), I also have to ask for what reason any of that sells clothes to women. (If anyone knows, please email us the answer, and we will consider it for future posts.)

I look at the women in fashion publications, and I reflect now on how completely different they are from those in publications aimed at straight and clueless guys. Take any well-done fashion editorial piece and compare it with say, the Playmate of the Month pictorial. Three messages are forcefully presented to women: First, to appeal to men, you do not need to spend all that much on clothes; indeed, if ever there were an illustration of the principle of less is more, here it is. Second, you do not have to be all that thin; the women in men’s magazines illustrate what evolutionary biologists have long been saying: whether they know it or not (probably not), men seek mates who have sufficient body fat to carry a pregnancy to term. The third thing you notice is that it really does pay to smile and to look interested in the guy who is looking you over. (Come on, admit it: your Mom told you that too, right?)

We get it that fashion photos for women’s apparel are not directed at men. Maybe that helps explain why we remain so clueless when it comes to choosing gifts for women. As to what our magazines say back to women, do we really feel comfortable sending the message that, no matter the season or what is showing on the runways, nothing equals the effect of a red thong and a pair of stilettos? And for evening, accessorize that with an engaging smile? I suspect women are no more interested in getting that message than men are prepared to understand why those lean and mean girls in fashion photographs appeal to potential customers. So much about romance will just continue to remain a mystery to us all.

Credit: Alan Behr