The secret life of a fashion model: rampant exploitation, scant rewards
Sara Ziff, formerly the face of Tommy Hilfiger, is trying to level the playing field for models, who, despite representing the epitome of luxury lifestyles, are at risk of being exploited sexually and financially in an opaque industry, writes Rose Hackman
Sitting at a table in a scruffy restaurant in Chelsea, New York, Sara Ziff looks across the room at a handsome blond man in his 20s, unsuspectingly eating a slice of pizza by the window. She interrupts herself mid-sentence: "Do you think he has heard of the Model Alliance?"
She laughs and imagines the interaction that might ensue were she to go over and ask him, "Hey, are you a model?" - a pick-up line she has doubtlessly heard many times.
Ziff is the former face of Tommy Hilfiger. She's blond, beautiful, a little kooky and highly intelligent. She is also a labour organiser.
The pizza-eating man in question, who looks like a model ("He's got that look"), is precisely the kind of person Ziff, 32, seeks to organise. In the three years since she founded her non-profit group, Model Alliance, Ziff has been fighting for the rights of models in the American workplace. She now counts 400 members.
Ziff's battles have included extending New York child-performer rights to include underage models, speaking up against the designers who, up until this year, paid most of their models in trade during Fashion Week (think a pair of stiletto shoes or a geometric dress rather than hard cash) and highlighting the lack of financial transparency between agencies and the models they represent.
For the vast majority of the thousands of runway models who flocked to New York last month, Fashion Week was anything but a money-making business. At best, they will have walked away with a few thousand US dollars in their pockets.