James Scully’s radical idea for the fashion industry: Treat models like human beings – Washington Post

James Scully did not intend to become the public scold of a global fashion industry one that views models as interchangeable widgets, that strong-arms them into unhealthy weight-loss regimens and insists on referring to them as girls. Nonetheless the veteran casting director has emerged as one of the most vocal agitators for change. He wants the fashion industry to treat models like human beings rather than commodities.

In February, several models came to him complaining about their treatment at an audition for the fall 2017 Balenciaga runway show the kind of prestigious booking that could pave a young models way in the business. Not only had some 150 hopefuls waited hours for the chance to be one of 47 chosen to walk in the show, they also had been left languishing for hours in an unlit stairwell while the casting directors went out for lunch.

Incensed, Scully took to Instagram to call out the Balenciaga team. But he wasnt done yet. In that same post, Scully claimed that representatives of the French fashion house Lanvin told model agencies not to send black women to its auditions. Finally, he voiced his suspicions that underage models were being booked in Paris, where 16 is the standard minimum.

I made the post out of personal outrage, Scully says a month later.

His alert led to apologies from Balenciaga, as well as denials and explanations from Lanvin and the casting directors accused of wrongdoing. But more than anything, Scullys words a rather modest call to arms, on the face of it managed to add fuel to an ongoing conversation about the often unprofessional, disorganized and offensive treatment of models by their own industry.

The frock trade has always been far grittier and seamier than its glossy trappings would suggest. There have been dramatic examples of drug abuse, deaths from eating disorders and sexual misconduct. But there are far more stories of mistreatment by omission or disregard. Models are expected to wait hours at an audition. They have fittings that last until the wee hours of the morning for which they receive no overtime pay. Sometimes they are paid for their services in clothes, not currency. They can wind up as nearly indentured servants working to pay off debts to their agencies.

And often designers and their staffs even fail to recognize that models need water as became clear during Kanye Wests presentation on Roosevelt Island last summer, when unpaid models collapsed in the September heat.

Im trying to make people realize the human cost of this behavior, Scully says. We have normalized it and become desensitized to it.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America offers some guidance all of it optional about providing food and water backstage and at long fittings, about not booking unhealthily thin models, about striving for diversity. The New York legislature passed a law in 2013 giving models younger than 18 protections similar to those that govern child actors, such as limits on work hours and regulations regarding pay.

But there are loopholes. And models 18 and older are essentially on their own, says Sara Ziff, who in 2012 founded the Model Alliance, an advocacy organization for models working in the United States.

I make sure parents understand that their child might be pressured to miss school, says Ziff, a former model. There are a lot of adult pressures that come with working in the industry at a young age.

In the past, models were typically in their 20s, with a sense of how the industry worked, by the time their careers gained traction. Now its all accelerated, Scully says. Todays models are being asked to do a womans job, and theyre kids.

The potential for abuse has grown with practices such as street casting, in which designers invite everyone from friends to their favorite bartender to participate in a show. The philosophy suggests that almost anyone can be a model at least for a few hours. The churn of fast fashion means that not just clothes are disposable; people are, too.

Girls are seeing this big dream world through social media. They think they can be a model and dont realize what theyre getting into. The turnaround now is so fast; its almost like trafficking, says Scully, who sits on the Model Alliance advisory board. Theyre pulled in and traumatized and then spit back out.

Scully, 52, is tall and slim with neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair, a jutting jaw, and a resting expression that is pleasantly somber supporting-actor handsome. His Manhattan apartment is filled with calming earth tones and nubby textures. He is the picture of earthy serenity by way of Architectural Digest.

But when he speaks, its at full gallop, his voice filled with the agita of someone whose childhood fantasy-come-true has gone bad.

One of 10 children in a working-class family, he spent his early childhood in South Amboy, N.J., a small city about an hour outside Manhattan that was almost all white and largely Catholic. It was the smallest town with the most bars, he says. Id never been around an Asian person. I didnt know what a Jewish person was.

He was transfixed by acting after an aunt took him to see Pippin on Broadway, but he loved fashion, too, thanks to an older sister with a stash of Cosmopolitan magazines. He enrolled at the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (LIM), where he took a class taught by Audrey Smaltz, a former host of Ebony Fashion Fair and founder of the team of backstage dressers and assistants called the Ground Crew. Scully became her intern.

His freelance work with her helped pay his way through school until he was distracted by jobs in retail and nightlife. His grades fell, he lost his scholarship and dropped out. He got a job at the influential fashion boutique Charivari, later worked for the production company Kevin Krier & Associates, and then Harpers Bazaar. Scullys career helped him see the fashion industry from virtually every angle.

Hes been a part of fashion shows since the early 90s, and hes seen a lot in that time, Smaltz says. Hes seen all thats happened and how its changed. Its not nice.

Smaltz recalls when a runway show featured 10 to 15 professional models, and each would make three or four changes in a single show. Today, a show hires 50 women. Mostly, anonymous. No clothing changes.

How can you pay all those models? They try to pay the models in clothes. Smaltz says. You dont need anyone with experience. Theyre like robots. ... Some directors tell the girls: Do not smile. Do not clap. Its one model after another. Its a human conveyor belt.

Scullys foray into activism began in the mid-2000s, but the seeds had been planted earlier. As a teenager, his vision of fashion was shaped by images of the multicultural aesthetic of Saint Laurent and Halston in the 1970s an ideal he continued to carry into his career.

He went on to work on some of the most influential runway shows of the late 1990s, including those mounted by Tom Ford for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, whose casting was particularly diverse. Fords shows helped turn the Ethiopian-born model Liya Kebede into a star. In 2003, she became one of the faces of Estee Lauder the first black model to represent the beauty brand.

But the prejudices Kebede faced along the way exasperated Scully. A few years later, after taking time away from the industry, he joined activist Bethann Hardison and models Naomi Campbell and Iman in industry town halls, panel discussions and a media blitz to highlight the lack of black and brown models on the runway. Hardison, a former model and agent, worked to mentor more women of color, and men. Scully pushed to cast more of them in shows.

[Once Again, White Is the New White]

He speaks his mind. Thats who he is, Smaltz says. I just thought, Good for you, Scully. Take care of these young girls.

In May, he will be honored by the Black Alumni of Pratt Institute for his efforts.

In the winter of 2016, Scully delivered an impassioned talk at a Business of Fashion conference in Europe about labor practices that include bullying young women and treating puberty like a career-killer.

His February Instagram post, with more than 9,700 likes, received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Change is on the way thanks to you, wrote model Karolina Wallace.

It gives me a lot of hope to know that there is someone like you fighting for better treatment of models, wrote Gwen Van Meir, a young model. I once [was] in Milan, waited at a casting for almost four hours in the hot sun, with no water available. ... It seemed like a lot of the models were afraid to say anything.

Over the years, the very nature of what it means to be a model has shifted, from one of performer and experienced professional to that of an anonymous, prepubescent-looking mannequin. Only a few savvy young women of this era Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss, Kendall Jenner have successfully positioned themselves as full-fledged personalities with the potential for professional longevity. Thats largely thanks to their diligent off-the-clock efforts on social media.

But models have few work protections. Theyre not unionized. Financial agreements with agencies can be opaque. Pressure to lose weight is not just a medical concern but also a labor issue, says Ziff of the Model Alliance.

I think that many of the problems James called out models waiting an inordinate amount of time, working through the night, not having breaks all of that is a symptom of a bigger problem, Ziff says. And thats a power imbalance.

Modeling has always been unregulated. And a models career was always relatively short and reliant on a certain amount of good timing and genetics. But there was a code of ethics and on some human level, you did care about models, Scully says.

I sit and I have to do massive castings with 600 girls a season, Scully says. Im bleary-eyed. I have no idea who I saw.

Now its really about being clothes hangers, he says. Theyre disposable and replaceable.

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James Scully's radical idea for the fashion industry: Treat models like human beings - Washington Post