Boston Globe Writes Fashion Industry Sexual Expose On Patrick Demarchelier, Greg Kadel, David Bellemere, Karl Templer & More Model Aggression

In what is becoming a fashion industry #MeToo moment, The Boston Globe released their investigation of sexual assault and misconduct accusations against at least 25 photographers, agents, stylists, and casting directors including Patrick Demarchelier, David Bellemere, Greg Kadel, Seth Sabal, Karl Templer and more. 

Models offering testimony include Abbey Lee, RJ King, Myla Dalbesio, Chloe Hayward and more prominent names in the industry. 

One of the industry's most prominent voices Coco Rocha told the Globe's Spotlight team that when she refused to get naked on the set at age 16, the photographer replaced her with a girl younger and more obedient. Months later, another famous photographer simulated an orgasm as he took her picture.

On her first test shoot at age 15, Dasha Alexander said the photographer held the camera in one hand and digitally penetrated her with his other. The move would make the pictures more "raw" and "sensual". I find this move laughable because a woman's sensuality is much more innate. If anything, the photographer would inspire raw fear -- unless the model was in full agreement with the gesture. If the photographer didn't ask her in advance about this digital penetration, he is guilty of sexual assault. 

“If people really understood what goes on behind the glamour of the industry, they would be mortified,” said Abbey Lee, an Australian model who, despite having been fondled on sets, describes herself as “one of the lucky ones.”

More than 50 models spoke to the Globe Spotlight Team about sexual misconduct from inappropriate touching to full assault. Some models seek to expose serial predators and their enablers. Others want legal protections and "radical reform" of fashion's youth-obsessed industry they say reduces them to exploited "meat" and "clothes hangers", beautiful young bodies "pimped out" by their agents.

Spotlight says that in validating the claims of sexual claims made against a group of 25 or more photographers, agents, stylists, casting directors and other fashion industry professionals, their reporters verified email accounts and digital footprints with third parties  while reading emails and other digital records. Some alleged victims went on the record, while others chose to remain anonymous. 

In one case, seven women named the same well-known photographer, men who include "Patrick Demarchelier, who was Princess Diana’s personal photographer; David Bellemere, whose photos have appeared on the covers of Elle and Marie Claire Italy; and Greg Kadel, who has shot for mega brands like Victoria’s Secret and Vogue."

Models also identified photographers Andre Passos and Seth Sabal, known for doing test shoots typically paid for by the models or their agency to build their portfolios. Karl Templer, one of fashion's most powerful stylists is also named. 

Men named by The Globe all denied the allegations. Some expressed frustration that the alleged victims aren't public. One photographer insisted that sexual encounters were consensual, and other maintain that models know that touching and positioning -- or digital penetration or fondling to get the right effect -- are just part of the job. 

Conde Nast, a media conglomerate that includes Vogue, Glamour, and GQ, said it has stopped working for now with Demarchelier and Kadel, and Victoria’s Secret -- my alma mater -- said it has suspended its relationship with Kadel.

It is an industry, the models told the Spotlight Team, where the sexual and financial exploitation of teenagers is almost routine. Nearly 60 percent of models interviewed by the Globe said they had been touched inappropriately during work-related situations, the violations ranging from unwanted kissing to rape. Yet, for decades, victims of sexual misconduct in the fashion world have struggled to be heard and taken seriously.

Modeling, they say, may be work that accentuates their beauty and sensuality, but it is still work. “It’s a job, and just because you see a picture of me in underwear, that’s not an invitation to come to my bedroom,” said Chloe Hayward, a British model who said fending off propositions by photographers is common for her and many of her peers, especially early in their careers.

The models argue that they are in a very difficult situation, especially in the early stages of their careers. If they speak out, they are labeled "difficult' and they might as well leave the industry. 

Cameron Russell talking about fashion modeling with ted talk audience

One of the most vocal models, Cameron Russell took to Instagram to protest widespread model abuse with the hashtag #myjobshouldnotincludeabuse. In the next two days after her post, she received hundreds of accounts of sexual misconduct. Russell knew many of the alleged predators well as men who had victimized her in the early years of her career. 

“The last 48 hours has been devastating,” Russell wrote on Instagram at the time. “We know what is happening in fashion. We tolerate it and ignore it and excuse it every day. We all know who the perpetrators are and we continue to work with them. STOP. Advertisers and magazines, stop hiring these people. Agencies, stop sending them talent. Stop today. Do not wait until lawyers get involved. Do the right thing because the wrong thing is horrific.”

Two weeks later, Vogue and its parent company, Conde Nast, banned Terry Richardson — a prominent photographer who had been dogged in the media for years by misconduct allegations. 

“It’s interesting and frustrating that now people want to finally pay attention,” said Coco Rocha, a Canadian model who began speaking out about Richardson’s behavior roughly a decade ago after, she says, he pretended to have an orgasm as he photographed her. There are “people at the top who no doubt have heard these stories for the last 20 years,” she added, “and haven’t done anything.”

AOC supported Rocha, taking a very aggressive position against Terry Richardson. For perhaps four years, we refused to republish any of his work, but the day he appeared again in Harper's Bazaar US, we said "okay, the industry doesn't care what he does." We continued to share Richardson's work on rare occasions, but only if it carried the byline of a prominent fashion magazine. 

Patrick Demarchelier

Russell's Instagram posts "led one of Demarchelier’s former photo assistants to write in October to Vogue editor Anna Wintour about relentless advances by Demarchelier beginning when she was a 19-year-old intern, according to an e-mail reviewed by the Globe.

As his subordinate, she told the Globe, she eventually gave into his sexual demands, feeling that she could not continue to reject him without endangering her position. When she did resist, she said, he would later berate her on the job.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, urged Wintour to prevent Demarchelier from having access to other young women."

“It hurts my heart so much to think of how many girls, many my own daughter’s age who have had to fend off or give in to his advances because I didn’t speak up at the time,” the woman wrote in another e-mail that was circulated to a modeling group. “I remember many test shoots with teenage girls where Patrick’s team of assistants (including me) was dismissed for the day only to find naked photos of the girl in the darkroom the next day.”

Terry Richardson (l) and Patrick Demarchelier (R)

The Globe interviewed seven women about the conduct of Patrick Demarchelier and any unwanted sexual advances. 

Demarchelier allegedly asked a teenage model, “Can I lick your pussy?” with the promise he could make her famous if she said yes. The shocked model detailed the exchange to the Spotlight Team, explaining that she said "no" and left the Paris hotel where the shoot was scheduled to take place.

“I wasn’t sure even if I understood his English correctly,” the model recalled to the Globe, until Demarchelier repeated the question.  “I said, ‘You should be ashamed, and I will never see you again.’ ”

“Everyone is trying to take advantage of you,” the model said. “At one point I was like, do I really have to do this to succeed? Do anything?”

After telling her agents that she never wanted to deal with Patrick Demarchelier again, the model was sent to him anyway, and had the identical, crude experience a second time. Spotlight corroborated this claim with a subsequent agent representing the model.

“Everyone is trying to take advantage of you,” the model said. “At one point I was like, do I really have to do this to succeed? Do anything?”

Asked by the Globe about the various sexual misconduct allegations, Demarchelier said it was “impossible” that the multiple complaints against him were true. “People lie and they tell stories,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.” Demarchelier said he has “never, never, never” touched a model inappropriately. Noting that he is married, he called the accusations “pure lying” by models who “get frustrated if they don’t work.”

Conde Nast has confirmed that they will no longer be using Patrick Demarchelier in the "foreseeable future", a decision they say was made in December but only recently communicated to the industry icon. 

When model RJ King was 18, his agency sent him to a photographer’s Manhattan apartment where no one else present.  The photographer casually offered him beer and drugs, maintains RJ King, and then sexually assaulted him while he was changing his clothes.

“When he finished,” King said, “it was the lowest I probably have ever felt.”

Spotlight writes that the incident left King wondering: “Is this what the industry is like? Is this what I’m going to continue to have to face?”

For many models, the answer is an emphatic and devastating yes. Many paragraphs in the Globe article do appropriately condemn the 'youth machine' that is the fashion industry.

Abuses can also occur when models are posing for major brands and magazines. One model said that during a shoot she was called a “whore” and “hooker” by a Dior executive, and a teenager who resisted going topless for German Vogue said the photographer suggested that a male model forcibly have sex with her to “loosen her up.”

Former Calvin Klein chief marketing officer Kim Vernon has spoken out consistently about sexual misconduct. She is interviewed extensively about sexual misconduct allegations against Mario Testino and Bruce Weber, and tells Spotlight:

 “I’m aware that it has happened in the industry and I believe all these recent measures to discuss and expose and correct the behavior are extremely important. . . . I don’t think brands have knowingly turned their head the other way.”

“Modeling agencies aren’t protecting these girls; they care more about the money,” said Carolyn Kramer, a former codirector of the Marilyn Agency in New York who now owns a Provincetown art gallery. “If you’ve got a $30 million exclusive Ralph Lauren worldwide contract available to you as a model agent, but you’ve heard rumors about the photographer being a scumbag, you’re taking a booking. You don’t care about the model. . . . I was complicit. I own up to it.”

“Everyone knew the names of photographers making advances and using their power against young women,” said Trudi Tapscott, a former agent for Elite Model Management and DNA Model Management.

Greg Kadel

Tapscott said she used to warn models about certain men -- specifically Greg Kadel --but she now acknowledges that’s not as effective as saying to photographers: “ ‘We’re not going to work with you ever again.’ . . . What makes it better is getting that photographer out of the equation.” Kadel, says Tapscott, treated model shoots like his "personal playground". 

One model said she hadn’t yet finished high school when her agent took her to a fashion party in New York City where adults gave her cocaine and alcohol — a vodka soda, her agent specified, because “that wouldn’t make me fat.”

At the end of the night, the model’s agent allegedly asked Kadel to put the stumbling teenager in a cab. Kadel did, but he jumped in the car, too, and directed the driver to a hotel. Once there, the model said, he pushed her against a wall, pulled off her clothes, and had sex with her. She spoke to her agent the next day.

“I told her what happened, and I was crying and upset,” the model recalled. “She convinced me that what happened was a good thing and hopefully my career would benefit from it.”

The Globe alleges that Kadel did help the teenager land multiple gigs with Victoria's Secret. When she refused to work with him any longer because of his unwanted sexual advances, her relationship with VS ended. 

The model, who asked that her name be withheld, confided in her boyfriend at the time about Kadel’s unwanted sexual advances, warned a modeling friend about Kadel’s behavior, and told a subsequent agent she was uncomfortable working with Kadel. All three corroborated her account, and the Globe reviewed e-mail exchanges between the model and Kadel, as well as topless photographs Kadel took of her when she was a minor.

Victoria’s Secret said it is conducting a “full third-party investigation of the allegations” and added: “We are a company that celebrates and serves women, so this behavior could not be more contrary to who we are.”

Greg Kadel vigorously denies all the claims against him. 

A spokeswoman hired by Kadel provided additional comments, saying that Kadel “never sexually coerced or assaulted anyone in his life. As a creative professional for many years, Mr. Kadel has always accurately represented the intention or scope of his work and has always worked through a model’s agent and made sure that each model was fully aware and comfortable with the creative vision being pursued in any project before they signed on to participate.”

David Bellemere

Madisyn Ritland tells Spotlight about her experiences with David Bellemere, sharing a photographer's camera pose I know well. 

". . . he positioned her on her back on a table, naked, then crouched on top of her with his camera, his knees clamping her ribs and his crotch hovering above her head.

“I felt like I had no choices,” Ritland said.” I didn’t feel like I had permission to have thoughts. I just felt like, OK, this is how it works.”

The Globe reviewed photos from the first test shoot and spoke with two of Ritland’s friends who corroborated her account.

Bellemere’s behavior is so well-known that two agents told the Spotlight Team they stopped sending models to shoot with him years ago. But only in the fall of 2016 did Victoria’s Secret cut ties with him. That move came after several of its highly paid contract models, known as “Angels,” complained about his inappropriate touching and kissing.

Bellemere insists that Victoria’s Secret never explained their decision to drop him. If there was any physical contact with models, it was the result of “pushing the girl to pose, directing,” he explained. “I do it to get the best picture. It’s not harassment.” Bellemere surely understands that when he's shooting Victoria's Secret models, he's dealing with an informed sorority of professional women, with strong management backup. 

Myla Dalbesio’s describes her uncomfortable encounter with Bellemere during a 2015 lingerie shoot in Paris for Lord & Taylor. Dalbesio says the photographer pressed his body against hers and wagged his tongue at her to mimic oral sex.

Bellemere contacted Dalbesio on Instagram sending her a photo of a naked woman with bondage marks and an accompanying message that said, “Let’s shoot private next time.” The writers verified Dalbesio’s account with her fiance, in whom she confided at the time, as well as with an individual present at the Paris photo shoot. The writers also saw the Instagram message and photo sent by Bellemere.

“I was really shocked,” Dalbesio recalled. “It felt really sexually charged and inappropriate.”

Professional Practices vs Sexual Aggression

The models told The Globe that they understand they will be touched, prodded and pulled at a photo shoot. But they are vividly aware of when the conduct has crossed the line of professionalism. 

One model described a shoot within the last several years in which Karl Templer, a top fashion industry stylist, approached her while she was against a wall, topless.

“Karl comes up to me,” she recalled, “and gets down on his knees and yanks my underwear and my shorts down . . . really fast. I remember I’m gripping onto it with my finger and he’s still pulling.”

“He was trying to get me naked,” she said. “He was trying to pull off my clothes without my permission.”

The Globe corroborated her account with two friends and reviewed an e-mail she wrote to her agent before the shoot specifying she would not be comfortable with frontal nudity below the waist.

Templer, in a statement, said, “I deny these vague and anonymous allegations. If I’ve ever inadvertently made anyone feel uncomfortable, I’m truly sorry. Although physical interactions with models is a necessary aspect of my job as a fashion stylist, I’ve never touched anyone in an inappropriate way nor ever with any sexual intent. I’m always respectful of models, remain deeply committed to creating a safe and professional working environment and embrace the systematic changes that our industry is implementing.”

AOC will publish a separate article about reforms in the fashion industry. We've omitted a lot of information in The Globe Spotlight article. You can read two free articles w/o registering and we direct you to Beauty and the Ugly Truth.  ~ Anne