Ripoff Report | Ford Models | Complaint Review: 52275

Ripoff Report | Ford Models | Complaint Review: 52275:

'via Blog this'Moreau, a close confidante of Naomi Campbell, was shown remarking to friends over dinner: `Africa would be okay if they were all white.' He later adds: `I don't like black girls.' 
Elite is widely regarded as the blueprint for modern modelling - it ushered in a wave of corporate thinking previously unseen in the industry. Since it opened in 1971, the agency has discovered and managed several generations of supermodels. `Elite invented the whole modern modelling business,' says Roger Tredre, Editor-In-Chief of Worth Global Style Network, the fashion industry's online bible. `They brought in professional people who turned modelling into the corporate and professionally run business it is today.' 
But Elite has long attracted accusations of seedy impropriety on the part of its male management. Its chairman John Casablancas serves as a fitting metaphor for the fashion industry's fickle moral standards. At over 6ft 2 inches, he cuts an imposing figure - almost professorial in his treatment of his models. In 1994, then aged 50, he married for the third time. His bride was a 17-year-old Bible-reading Brazilian high school junior called Aline Wermelinger - they met when she was competing in the regional heat of Elite's `Look of the Year' contest in Rio De Janeiro. Casablancas, who was one of the contest's judges, voted Wermelinger the winner. 
Interviewed the same year, Casablancas explained his rationale for marrying such a young model: `Look, I was 24 and the models were 18,' he said, almost without irony. `I was 35 and the models were 18. I was 45 and the models were 18. And now I'm 50 and the models are still 18. It's not that I try to date the models that I work with. It's that everybody socialises with the people with whom they work all the time and so the possibility that that would happen was enormous.'

"John Casablancas, founder of leading model agency Elite and the father of Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas, has been named in a sex abuse lawsuit by an aspiring model who claims he made her pregnant at the age of 15, and then arranged an abortion -- all more than 15 years ago. 
John Casablancas, 60, whose Elite agency has represented supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, is accused of sexual abuse of a minor. The plaintiff, whose name was not made public, is seeking substantial damages. Lawyers for Casablancas said the allegations were fabricated and were confident the case would be dismissed. 
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that Casablancas began sexually abusing the girl in 1988 when she was a finalist in Elite's prestigious "Look of the Year" competition for fresh new faces. The former model said she traveled with Casablancas to New York later that year when it was discovered she was pregnant by him. She alleges she was driven to a doctor's office and an abortion was arranged for her at the behest of Casablancas. "

http://www.efanguide.com/~thestrokes/news/

Sorry it took me some time - this is a picture of John Casablancas, founder of model agency Elite, "judging" a candidate in the "Look of the Year" contest. Casablancas is the one with glasses.

He is now accused in Los Angeles of sexual abuse of a minor. The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, alleges that Casablancas began sexually abusing the girl in 1988 when she was a finalist in Elite's prestigious "Look of the Year" competition for fresh new faces.

The former model said she traveled with Casablancas to New York later that year when it was discovered she was pregnant by him. She alleges she was driven to a doctor's office and an abortion was arranged for her at the behest of Casablancas.

Casablancas set up the Elite agency in New York in 1970 and made it into one of the world's leading model agencies, guiding the careers of Linda Evangelista, Andie MacDowell and Kelly Emberg and rivaling the long-established Ford Models Inc.

The name of the plaintiff in the Los Angeles lawsuit is being withheld but her lawyer said she was now in her 30s, married with two children, and living in San Diego.

"What happened to me should never happen to any little girl. I hope that by coming forward I can protect other minor boys and girls working for Elite or any other agency," the plaintiff said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Casablancas denies the charges. He left Elite in 2000 and now runs the John Casablancas Modeling and Career Center in New York.

Elite was at the center of another sex storm in 1999 when a British television documentary caught the chairman of Elite Europe soliciting sex from an undercover journalist who was posing as an aspiring model. Two senior Elite executives were forced to resign.