- Fashion week, the highlight of fashion and modeling, has taken up residence in Paris.
- In connection with this milieu, the Epstein affair notably highlighted the suspicions hanging over the Frenchman Jean-Luc Brunel. And through these surveys, a raw look is brought to a whole system, that of the modeling of the 1980s, then of the following decades.
- An industry that has at best closed its eyes and, at worst, been complicit in the actions of many agents vis-à-vis the models . 20 Minutes has exclusively collected the testimonies of several of them.
Time's up . While the Epstein case shone the spotlight on Jean-Luc Brunel, accused of sexual assault and of having supplied underage girls to the American financier who died last August, models had tried to sound the alarm as soon as the 1980s against many agents. Faced with an industry - currently united in Paris for fashion week and haute couture fashion shows - which at best closed their eyes and, at worst, was an accomplice, five women testify today in 20 Minutes .
Lisa Gattis was 18, in 1980, when the Ford agency sent him to Paris in the Prestige agency of Claude Haddad, famous for having discovered Jerry Hall, and who died in 2009 from lung cancer. "I was initially housed at his home, but it did not seem strange to me because there were two other models at his house," recalls this American. Quickly, Lisa made the cover of Elle magazine, moved to another apartment, then Haddad invited her to party in Ibiza. When she arrives, contrary to what he had assured her, she is alone with him. "He told me to leave my luggage in his room, I said 'no, no'," she says. According to his account, his agent knocks on the door of his room the first night: “I pretended to be asleep. He stayed for a while, looking at me, and whispering, "You are only nice when you sleep." "
Another model arrives the next day and the same scene is repeated the following night. On the last day, the two young women return from the evening to early morning and find themselves in the kitchen. "Claude Haddad came out of his room, completely naked, he was ... ready, if you understand, and he went to my room. We saw it and we laughed. He insisted and then jumped into the pool. If I had been alone in my room, I don't dare imagine what could have happened. ”On her return to Paris, Lisa finds all her belongings on the landing and another mannequin inside her apartment. “All of a sudden, I no longer won any contract. I stayed a few more months and returned to the United States. "
"Fear for their career"
Lisa Kauffmann, she arrived in Paris in 1983. She also stayed with Claude Haddad. “At the start, his girlfriend was there, everything was fine. And then she went on vacation, "says the Canadian. “One night, he came to my room, he was wearing a robe without anything underneath. He slipped into my bed and rubbed against me. I pretended to sleep. According to her, the agent starts over night after night: "It was a creep (pervert). I was 17, he was 48. ”When her booker , Renée Dujac-Cassou, opened her own 100% female agency, Lisa joined her immediately. The irony, she said, was that Claude Haddad had "warned him against Jean-Luc Brunel, saying that he was dangerous". Dinners with those in their forties, evenings at the Bains Douches, bottles of alcohol ... Lisa has experienced all of this. But she had a precious weapon: "I understood what they said in French and spoke it enough to answer '' Va te faire foutre ''. "
Why did no model complain at the time? "Many girls were afraid of reprisals for their careers," she said. “In the early 1980s, we often didn't have official papers to work. We were there with a tourist visa, we spent three months in France, then three months in Italy or Germany. Do you imagine yourself at 17 or 18, in a foreign country, for many without speaking the language, going to the police station and filing a complaint in an irregular situation? "
Actions denounced since 1988
The reputation of Claude Haddad, well known in the community, is exposed to the light in the report American Girls in Paris , broadcast by CBS on the program 60 Minutes in 1988. Several young girls, some minors, accuse him of assault sexual. "How many adolescent girls have you had sex with?" Asked Diane Sawyer. "Can you define adolescent girls?" "Replies Haddad, who swears:" 16, almost never. I could flirt or hug them, but nothing more. The journalist then reads testimonies to him: "You had to sleep with him to work", "He almost raped me. "" It's always '' almost '', what does that mean? "Haddad interrupts.
“For the latter, she was 15 years old. 15 years, "insists the journalist. "I do not remember, perhaps, it is possible", ends the agent, who assures that it is the fault of young women: "When a French girl plays with her body, she knows that she can have problems with men. The photographer Alé de Basseville, who started at that time, told 20 Minutes that several models told him that they had been raped by Claude Haddad.
The other scout targeted in the 60 Minutes report is Jean-Luc Brunel, who took over the agency Karin Models. With his face hidden, a model accuses him of having drugged and raped her. Other young girls describe "a cattle market", with these famous dinners attended by "rich and old men" with whom they were encouraged to have sex to continue working. Last August, former model Zoë Brock certified to 20 Minutes that she had refused Brunel's advances and had immediately been demoted and then blacklisted .
"Brunel was cocaine incorporated ," continues Alé de Basseville. I told all my friends not to go to her parties. In the report broadcast on CBS, the all-powerful Eileen Ford, patroness of the agency of the same name, which had a partnership with that of Brunel in Paris, seems to be overwhelmed. "Eileen was aware of the accusations but was in denial, she was under the spell of Jean-Luc," said American photographer Clayton Nelson to 20 Minutes . The report ends Claude Haddad's career, but Jean-Luc Brunel pursues his in the United States. Since the explosion of the Epstein affair last July, two former models have accused the French agent of rape. If the facts appear to be prescribed, another complaint, for more recent acts of sexual harassment, has been filed. Jean-Luc Brunel "firmly contests the accusations relayed by the press", had assured last October his lawyer, Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, and "he remains at the disposal of justice. "
"We are men, we have our needs"
In New York, Paris and Milan, in the small fashion world, "everyone knew," insists Alé de Basseville. Marie Anderson, vice-president of Elite Chicago in the mid-1980s, agreed: “It was the culture of the time, everyone knew. We thought that the only thing to do was to warn the girls, "sighs this American who, at the head of Boss Babe Models, coaches today the young models, preaching integrity and courage as cornerstones of a career.
She particularly remembers an 18 year old girl in the 1980s. "It was time to go to Paris for her career, I warned her against Gérald Marie (then boss of Elite Paris ) ”. Quickly, the young woman calls her, “crying” because, according to her, the agent tries to “intimidate her so that she sleeps with him, telling her that she will not get a blanket until she refuses ". Marie Anderson tells him to "resist this blackmail." A few months later, the young woman made the front page of a women's magazine. “She admitted to me that she had given in because he was too aggressive and she didn't book anything. She was an adult and made her choice, but it broke my heart. ”
Marie Anderson poses in her story, before recounting a personal experience. At the start of her career, she worked for photographer Stan Malinowski and went to Rome for a shoot for Harper's Bazaar . During an evening, she finds herself alone with the boss of the magazine, Giuseppe "Peppone" Della Schiava, and her assistant. Marie Anderson says: “Her assistant begins to wrap her tongue around a lock of my hair and tells me that the three of us are going to have a good time. The young American woman gets up to leave, panicked. "Peppone grabs me, pushes me against the wall, and says to me in perfect English:" Either you sleep with us, or Malinowski will never work again ". She managed to run away. "Terrified" of having endangered the career of her boss, she did not tell anyone about the incident. “This is the typical attitude of a victim. I told myself that it was my fault, that I shouldn't have dressed in a sexy fashion. It took me a while to understand that we were dealing with predators, ”she analyzes today. "I grew up in this bubble. It was before #MeToo and #TimesUp. At the time, I did not have the courage to denounce the sexual excesses of our environment, ”she regrets.
The young woman reached her breaking point in the late 1980s, in Ibiza. She says she attended a dispute between John Casablancas, the legendary boss of Elite, Gérald Marie and two executives of the agency, Lisa Herzog and Trudi Tapscott. "They were in tears, begging (Casablancas and Marie) to stop sleeping with minors". And Gérald Marie, with her French accent, said to them: "We are men, we have our needs. Marie Anderson resigns soon after, and will try to sound the alarm later by testifying in an article by journalist Michael Gross for New York Magazine , who had already rocked the fashion world with his book Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women . In this article, John Casablancas confirms that the argument in Ibiza has a good place but argues for a difference in culture, with an age of consent fixed at 15 years in Europe and 18 in the United States. And the man who invented the concept of "supermodels" to certify that all the sexual relations he had with minors - notably Stephanie Seymour when she was 16 years old - were consented.
"Men rated us like cows"
It is in Stockholm that the Swedish Ebba Karlsson is approached by a scout whom she knows by reputation, at the beginning of the 1990s. He invites her to come to the Côte d'Azur for castings. Once alone in the house where they are housed, she says that she was “forced” into a sexual relationship to which she did not consent. "I did not fight because I was afraid, but it was a rape," she says. Without money to buy a plane ticket to return to Sweden, she insists on passing the promised casting and follows the scout in Paris. She arrives in "a magnificent office". Facing her: Gérald Marie.
"He started by closing the blinds so that nobody could see us, then he showed me books of famous models, especially Swedish women, and he said to me: '' You know what they all did to become famous? '' "Before she can answer," Gérald Marie slides his hand under my skirt and his fingers inside me, "says Karlsson. “I was petrified, I didn't know how to react. Despite everything, she went to the casting which took place at the French agent's apartment a few days later, assured that she would not be alone with him. “There were ten of us, some of the girls lived there. We had to undress and parade in underwear and high heels. You had to show her breasts. And there were two or three men who looked at us and noted us, like cows. "She then returned to Sweden where she" can no longer bear that (her) boyfriend Themba (the) touches ". She ends up telling him everything . Contacted by 20 Minutes , he corroborated his testimony: “I could see that she was hiding something traumatic. "Themba confirms that the young woman told her that she had been raped by the scout and sexually assaulted by Gérald Marie:" I found the scout one evening at the BZ club in Stockholm. I smashed her face. "
Ebba Karlsson, who has just celebrated her 50th birthday, is now a life coach and expresses her regrets: “I was 21 years old, I considered myself an adult, intelligent. I should have complained immediately but I was afraid. "She claims to have been threatened by the scout ," David ", who, according to her, had a Moroccan passport and whose real name she does not know:" He told me to be careful, that he knew powerful people, especially in the police. "
"They think they are untouchable"
Gérald Marie's career faltered in 1999, when the BBC broadcast a report filmed with a hidden camera following the boss of Elite Europe for several months. The investigation accuses the agency of sexually exploiting young models, notably via promoters in Milan's nightclubs. Gérald Marie is filmed offering a young woman undercover a million lire (about 400 euros) to sleep with her. After the broadcast of the report, Elite denounces "unacceptable comments and situations", and Gérald Marie is suspended. But in the process, the agency attacked the BBC in defamation, accusing the British channel of having produced a "dishonest montage". Gérald Marie defends himself on the set of Tout le monde en parle , surrounded by two models.
Before the trial, the BBC negotiates an amicable settlement, recognizing that Elite "warns and protects young models facing the risk of sexual exploitation" and undertakes never to repost the report. Gérald Marie finds his post of president of Elite Europe, which he keeps until 2011.
It is this year that the famous American top model Carré Otis publishes his Beauty Disrupted autobiography. The one who is then married to actor Mickey Rourke accuses her former agent, Gérald Marie, of having raped her when she was staying with him in Paris in 1985-1986, at the age of 17. According to her testimony, the agent attacked her one night while her partner at the time, supermodel Linda Evangelista, was traveling. In an interview in 2008, Mickey Rourke had expressed his desire for revenge "against the man who raped Carré", without naming him.
“I did not have the vocabulary to describe what happened to me, because I grew up in an era when we did not name these things, and I had no adult to turn to,” explains Carré Otis (now Sutton) 20 minutes away . But she insists: according to her, "it was rape. We were kids in an industry that normalized these behaviors, which objectified and sexualized us. Men like Harvey Weinstein, Gérald Marie and Jean-Luc Brunel do not see the problem with their behavior and they believe they are untouchable, ”she believes.
We sent detailed questions to Gérald Marie by email via his agency, Oui Management, who replied a few days later that “Mr. Marie did not wish to speak. According to Carré Otis, his ex-agent has never publicly disputed his allegations nor attempted to have the publication of his memoirs, still on sale today.
"Models are not safer today"
When speech was released in Hollywood with the #MeToo movement, many models tried to give voice with the hashtag #MyJobShouldNotIncludeAbuse ("Abuse should not be part of my job"). In February 2018, a Boston Globe investigation shone the spotlight on the alleged abuses of several famous photographers, including Frenchman Patrick Demarchelier, accused of sexual harassment. Fifteen male models in the United States have accused Bruce Weber of sexual assault and an investigation has been opened against Terry Richardson in New York. In France, Flavie Flament accused photographer David Hamilton - who has since committed suicide - of having raped her when she was 13, but languages are still struggling to untie themselves in the fashion world.
Last October, the ex-top model and American activist Sara Ziff was in Paris with the Secretary of State for Equality between women and men, Marlène Schiappa, to present the RESPECT initiative of the Model Alliance organization, which aims to combat human trafficking. LVMH, Kering, Chanel, and L'Oreal signed it, but Carré Otis is waiting to see if the commitments will be kept: “The reluctance of the industry illustrates the mountain we have to climb. You have to educate enough people to create a new standard. "
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