by Wayne Sterling

"I don't think that people are that interested in models anymore"
-Calvin Klein

It was a sentiment that boomed through the countless model booking tables in Manhattan and left a very opinionated industry perfectly speechless.
To make matters even worse Calvin Klein proceeded to state, on the record "It's not a great moment for the modeling industry. It (the lack of interest in models) says a lot about our society and I think it's good."

Is this the same Calvin Klein who took an odd looking English working class lass named Kate Moss and turned her into one of the biggest icons of the 90's? Is this the same Calvin Klein where inclusion in his painfully selective campaigns was known to send bookers into spasms of joy?

And it wasn't like Calvin Klein was alone in his perception that the newest crop of models the agencies had to offer were somewhat uncompelling. For months bookers have been going through a petty hell trying to secure covers for their Top Girls as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Elle were choosing to run with tussled Hollywood actresses like Calista Flockhart, Gweneth Paltrow and Halle Berry. And even W, the coolest American fashion bible of them all was starting to cook a brilliant fashion stew that mixed a little dash of The Socialite a/l/a Juergen Teller with two parts of music and movie stars like Aaliyah and Selma Blair mixed down with a dose of known models like Bridget Hall.
As young starlets developed a sharper sense of how fashion could be used to heighten their profile (literally), as fashion stylists forged cross-promotional relationships with major design houses, so much so that The Oscars now outrank Fashion Week as the premium outlet for designer fashion, it certainly looked like it was curtains for the petit grand dames of modeling.

But back to Mr. Klein and his guillotine statements. Like everything in the fashion business, its not that the statement is so terrible because of its face value. The statement, like the jaded ennui of the typical fashion maven is an expression calculated for effect.
And what would that effect be?
It just so happened that Klein's diss of the modeling industry came at the precise moment he launched his multi-million dollar CK jeans ad campaign featuring musical stars like Liz Phair, Leona Naess and most notoriously of all, rap diva Foxxy Brown. A sentiment that extreme was sure to generate oceans of press which in this business is nothing but a highly evolved form of free advertising. But wouldn't the voicing of the latter part of the statement, the part about "Its not a good moment for the modeling industry", perfectly alienate powerful elements of the very industry that Klein used to be one of the most generous supporters of. Therein lies the meat of the anti-model matter.

It is not an exaggeration to state that for the past three years relationships between agencies and top fashion designer have been somewhat tense. It has never been a deliberate or calculated conflict. It was just the classic business struggle between client and service industry where the agencies are bent on getting as much money for its services and the designers are trying to minimize the need for that very service.
In other words fashion designers and editors have pretty much thrown cold water on the runaway "Supermodel as Superstar" mania that drove modeling fees up through the roof. Now a hot model like a Ling or an Angela Lindvall remains on covers and in major campaigns for roughly two seasons (a year in real time) before being rotated in favor a new body of girls.
What that means is that no new faces are really being given the kind of exposure that Gianni Versace, Steven Miesel, Karl Lagerfeld and of course Calvin Klein used to give to the Naomi's, Linda's, Christy's and Kate's of this world.