The world of fashion has been shaken by the news that there is an investigation at the moment led by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a non-ministerial government department operating under the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, into suspected anti-competitive arrangements in the UK clothing, footwear and fashion sector. The investigation involves a few modelling agencies.
Officers sized computer hard drives and files of printed documents at Storm Model Management (launched Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne's careers, but also represents Cindy Crawford, Lily Cole and Carla Bruni), Premier Model Management (throughout the years it nurtured models such as Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Christy Turlington) and Models 1 (representing Yasmin and Amber Le Bon and Erin O'Connor, among the others) to investigate claims that the firms are working together as a secret cartel to drive up appearance fees and fix prices to big brands and high street retailers, violating in this way the laws against preventing competition.
Agencies state the high prices are dictated by quality, while retailers are trying to force down the price of modelling fees as they have to shoot more clothes from different angles for their websites, a process that involves hiring a model for longer hours (interesting how the problem with retailers is always to keep costs down and maximise their own profits, but never look at the quality of their products and at the labour conditions in the sweatshops producing their clothes...).
The investigation - headed by Stephen Blake, senior director of the cartels and criminal group at the CMA - is still in the early stages. Everything started in March, but the process of information gathering continued in the last few months. A decision on whether to continue with the investigation or close it will be made around October to verify whether either the Competition Act 1998 or Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union have been broken. If found guilty the agencies may face fines of up to 10 per cent of their worldwide turnover.
This is not the first investigation involving modelling agencies that the CMA carries out: around 2010, the CMA investigated the alleged misconduct of traders stating they were modelling and entertainment agencies (1st Class Trading Ltd, Model Factor LLP, Runway Models Ltd and Model Model) accused of claiming to provide consumers with modelling and entertainment work that never materialised.
While it looks like the days when Canadian supermodel Linda Evangelista (once with Premier) once stated she and Christy Turlington wouldn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 aren't over yet, the investigation has sent shockwaves through the fashion industry.
Yet it is a shame there aren't specific laws to investigate corruption at other levels of the industry, otherwise officials would discover some rather bizarre conflicts of interests between fashion houses, editors, journalists, and high profile bloggers.
Not to mention the "quantity" debate: buying followers on the social networks may not be a crime, but what happens when a model who has bought a package of followers on Instagram lands a job for a prestigious advertising campaign or a high profile blogger who has done the same thing is elevated to fashion expert and is offered a job as a fashion journalist or is asked to be part of a panel in a fashion competition together with proper critics and fashion experts? Maybe the world of fashion hides at different levels many other interesting scandals all of them worthy of investigation.
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