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Karen Elson Poses for InStyle September 2021, Talks New Pro-Karen Modeling Venture AOC Fashion

Supermodel Karen Elson poses on the subscribers cover of InStyle Magazine’s September 2021 issue. Elson is styled by Daniela Paudice in images by Yelena Yemchuk [IG]./ Hair by Recine; makeup by Romy Soleimani

This entire fashion story is fabulous. Elson looks fantastic and Yemchuk’s images are rich and powerfully beautiful.

InStyle’s Karen Elson interview ‘Karen Elson Has the Power’ by Laura Brown delivers a power punch paragraph.

After 18 months of the universally painful and isolating COVID-19 experience, the modeling industry has been one of the first to revert to less than empathetic behavior. So Elson did something radical: She left her agents and now represents herself. The boldness of the move cannot be overstated. Agents not only groom a model's career, they manage finances and travel, often breeding less independence than codependence. And that, of course, can be less than healthy..

I just reread The Cut — which is where we first read that Karen Elson is on her own. And now I’ve read the InStyle article. There’s nothing new in this piece about Karen Elson, her work with Model Alliance and all the great role model work that Karen Elson does.

Elson at large raises issues about models getting respect — and money. We know about Elson and the Model Alliance’s campaigns for better treatment for models. Elson has asked previously, why do models not get compensated in ways similar to photographers, for example? Elson is raising some very big questions about the world of modeling beyond respect and being treated with a bit of empathy. Her questions include long-term compensation for creative work that rains money years later.

It’s clear that InStyle EIC Laura Brown has a low opinion of model agencies. But there’s no smoking gun in the InStyle story. I’m speed reading, but there’s not one example of the modeling industry being “one of the first to revert to less than empathetic behavior”, post-COVID. That’s a strong statement, Ms. Brown. Examples would be nice to support your assertion.

The issues — especially the financial issues that Elson raises — have always been at the center of AOC’s commentary about the 80’s supers. Elson observes:

I look at someone like Maye Musk, who I'm obsessed with, and I think, "All right. She's 73 years old. She's badass. She's still doing it." And the norms are being finally pushed up against. I look at Precious Lee. I look at Paloma [Elsesser]. Even Kaia [Gerber], who's now acting. These girls have got so much more to offer than just their beauty. Something has shifted. I remember [casting director] James Scully said to me that in the '80s the models had all the power. They were the ones who were calling the shots, like Linda Evangelista: "I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000." I love Linda, by the way. She is the funniest person on the planet. But they were in charge, and then. Somewhere in the '90s it went to, "Oh, they've got too much power. We've got to smack them back down."

AOC — and Anne personally — have always maintained that the smackdown of models was real — that the industry did say that the supers had too much power (and money). The downsizing of size 4-6 models to size 0 was about far more than sample sizes and the growth of the Asian market where women are smaller.

When you strip supermodel bodies of healthy muscles for ‘heroin chic’ waifs, you are an industry smacking models down to size — literally. And you are stripping them of sexual power. It’s happened to every great goddess in history.

Karen Elson — like most of us — endured a period of intense reflection during COVID lockdown. Elson decided — and we APPLAUD her — that she wants to represent herself. I hope she creates a new paradigm of some kind for other models to follow.

Elson is a realist and given the personal goals she has created for herself, she believes she can do a better job of selling Karen Elson, than her old agency. And she wants some editorial control over her jobs. Saying no to one, doesn’t means she never gets another.

If Google and Apple have talented employees not wanting to work in an office five days a week and Morgan Stanley has MBAs saying ‘no’ to investment banking over no quality of life, it makes perfect sense that Karen Elson doesn’t want to leave her kids on her first getaway post-COVID and run to meet a photographer who decided that very morning that s(he) had to have HER. And could she hop a plain pronto. Elson said “no’. Her kids were more important.

It’s not as if a more empowered model industry never existed. Personally, I think feminism at large got derailed in the late 90s and women have been losing ground ever sense. As Elson points out, there’s some hopeful signs out there in fashion world right now.

It’s silly to make predictions. But many of us are watching very carefully to see how our post-COVID world defines itself. As one new variant hits after another, we may be living a new life for decades to come. Can fashion adjust? It will have to. ~ Anne

Read the entire Karen Elson InStyle interview.

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