A new modelling agency, launched two days before International Women’s Day, aims to challenge the treatment of women in the industry.
With ten years of fashion experience between them, the founders of Linden Staub – Esther Kinnear-Derungs and Tara Davies – were disillusioned with how women were being treated.
“We wanted to make a change,” Ms Davies explained.
Currently, agencies tend to manage a mix of models they scout themselves and those on loan from other agencies. The two women felt that this leads to models being treated like commodities.
According to the founders, in most agencies, 20 per cent of the models are scouted and managed by the firm itself (“mother agency girls”), whereas 80 per cent of girls are on placement from other agencies. This often leads to horse trading behind closed doors.
The new firm says it will do away with the traditional business model and instead manage its small portfolio of models completely in-house. This is known in the industry as being a “mother agency only”.
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Model ethics
Happy National Women's Day ? @womensday #FemaleEmpowerment #Supporty #LindenStaub #London
— Linden Staub (@LindenStaub) March 8, 2016
“If you are talking to a mother agency in Paris, for example, they may offer you a girl only if you give them one of your mother agency girls next time,” said Ms Kinnear-Derungs. “It’s like selling your first born child.”
The founders say that having a mix of “mother agency girls” and models on placement “makes it all about the agency, not the girls”.
Ms Kinnear-Derungs added: “By just having mother agency girls, we cut out the political bullshit.”
The name of the “collective” – Linden Staub – is a fusion of the founders’ mothers, who the two women say empowered them from a young age.
“We want to reflect that same feeling of empowerment that we got from our mothers to everybody,” Ms Davies explained.
Linden Staub has set up shop on Charlotte Road, Shoreditch, and will manage a small portfolio of models.
Women’s Day launch
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