To Catch A Predator: What Are Agencies Doing To Keep Models Safe?
LatestGiven most fashion models start working in their mid-teens, Terry Richardson‘s alleged habit of sexually harassing the women he works with got me wondering what, if anything, is being done to protect high fashion’s youngest and potentially most vulnerable workers.
Richardson has come under fire for his on-set behavior, described thusly by the Danish model Rie Rasmussen, who once worked with Richardson on a Gucci campaign: “He takes girls who are young, manipulates them to take their clothes off and takes pictures of them they will be ashamed of. They are too afraid to say no because their agency booked them on the job and are too young to stand up for themselves.”
And by sometime model Jamie Peck, who said that Richardson stripped naked during a shoot without asking her permission, and eventually “maneuvered” her over to a couch in his home/studio, where he “strongly suggested I touch his terrifying penis.” When he ejaculated, one of his assistants gave Peck a towel.
And by a woman whose stylist friend stopped working with Richardson. “She quit because of having to watch him sexually harrassing/abusing two (naked) teenage Eastern European models who didn’t speak English — she didn’t speak up and was so ashamed I don’t think she did anymore styling for quite a while afterwards.”
And by a model who said during her shoot with Richardson, “He had me go down on him and took pictures of him coming on my face, which I had never done before, and when I went to the bathroom to clean up I could hear him and an assistant joking about it which is when I decided to never tell anyone.”
Richardson has denied the allegations of misconduct. But based on these and other interviews with sources close to Richardson, including agency employees, magazine staffers, stylists, and models, a portrait of the photographer’s tactics for getting young women to submit to his advances is emerging. And it is not pretty.
Said one source familiar with the environment in Richardson’s downtown New York studio, where Richardson, studio manager Seth Goldfarb, and first assistant David Swanson run the show, “The way those guys talk, women are whores and sluts, whores and sluts.” Richardson is smart enough to police his behavior when circumstances dictate restraint. “The truly inappropriate stuff only happens when Terry shoots in his home studio, or on location,” says this insider. “When he shoots at Milk or Industria” — two large professional studios in New York — “there are too many outsiders with prying eyes.”
And Richardson would never “strongly suggest” that one of the celebrities he shoots ought to get him off. “He never, never, ever acts like this in front of any celebrity, from A-list to Z-list, even the craziest, most drugged up, want-to-please Terry types.” Celebrities come surrounded by handlers and friends and publicists, and celebrities have both the power and the means to seek redress should anything happen to them on set.
This reality echoes in a strange way the sentiments of Marc Jacobs, who discussed Richardson earlier this week at an event in New York. Jacobs, who has shot with Richardson several times, said he always felt free to refuse when one of his ideas for a shot was too extreme. “I’ve worked with Terry and Terry has asked me to do some crazy things,” said the designer. “I know that those pictures will exist if I do them. But I’m a big boy and I can say no.”