Cameron Russell on Being an 'Agreeable' Model for Sunday Times Style March 10, 2024 AOC Fashion

Top model Cameron Russell, now 36, has a new memoir ‘How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone’, and it sounds hot. On the book’s cover, original supermodel Christy Turlington calls it “A unique and honest perspective on the fashion industry.”

Verity Parker styles the outspoken fashion industry and environmental activist in the usual luxury brands lineup, with cover looks by Miu Miu shot by photographer Clément Pasca [IG]. While Cameron wears expected casual-elegance fashion looks, industry money-maker bags are front and center in the fashion story. / Hair by Sabrina Szinay; Rei Tajima

Reading her Sunday Times UK [IG] interview with Megan Agnew in the March 10th issue, we learn that on her second fashion shoot, the young-model Russell was told she had “cocksucker lips”.

The Goal Was Model Submission

Russell comes at the topic of this hopefully-waning, fashion-industry reality from a fresh perspective, not an exclusively sexual one.

The topic is ‘submission’, and even the industry’s top editors require it — or certainly did require it — until the age of model activism began.

A Guest Stopping By In An Adult World

Russell describes herself as a “guest stopping by in an adult world”, one where consent and boundaries were either vague or nonexistent. Young models learned to get along to get ahead. Agnew notes:

She writes about being called “jailbait” and about a photographer miming oral sex during a shoot; another saying he wanted to “shoot a Lolita story” with her; and another, on a work trip, “grooming” her to get into bed with him when she was still a teenager. “Maybe later you will say this is rape, but it’s not,” she writes in her notebook at the time. “I chose to be here.”

Surely the book will provoke renewed conversation about how far we have or haven’t come in protecting the rights of fashion models. AOC’s perspective is that we’ve made major progress in our new-world industry, and it will be interesting to hear an update from the models themselves. ~ Anne