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Vreeland now finds herself above the battle, and just now the modeling business finds itself involved in an entertaining squabble. It began last summer when Johnny Casablancas, a fast-moving Frenchman who owns the largest model agency in Paris, set up shop in New York, where there are an estimated 800 models at work. Eileen Ford and Wilhelmina, heads of the two largest New York agencies, say that he had assured them that he would not invade. But invade he did, and he also hired Ford's financial controller and two of her top booking agents. Ford retaliated with a $7.5 million lawsuit against Casablancas for breach of fiduciary trust. Nevertheless, he now has 19 of Ford's models under contract and 16 of Wilhelmina's, for which she too is suing him. Protests Casablancas: "I did not snatch bodies. They are thinking people."
Eileen Ford, still the most successful model agent by far, is either motherly or tyrannical, depending on the viewpoint. Tiegs, who is Ford's client on the East Coast, has no complaints and probably should have none, considering that her income, largely earned through Ford, has been estimated at $300,000 a year. But Ford is not universally popular says a fashion photographer with satisfaction: "Now she's up against a businessman who's taking her best talent."
Bitchiness seems to be a constant in the $25 million-a-year model biz, despite (or perhaps even because of) the fact that the financial rewards are rapidly increasing. Television has made a big difference; a top model will get $1,000 a day for shooting a commercial, and then twice that for each 13-week cycle the commercial runs, so that in a 21-month period she will make $15,000 for one day's work. There are other changes too. Highly paid "image girls" like Tiegs, whose faces become associated with several specific products, have come into fashion. Margaux Hemingway and Lauren Hutton have restrictive but enormously profitable contracts. Margaux is reportedly receiving $1 million over five years to work exclusively for Faberge, while Hutton is getting $500,000 over two years from Revlon. Another agency owner, the Hungarian who calls himself Zoli, in mono-moniker fashion, sees daily fees escalating still further. Says he: "I doubt whether Hutton would step in front of a camera for less than $5,000 a day" when she finishes her Revlon contract. "Cheryl Tiegs is getting to that point too. People with faces that are well known are no longer advertising a product, they are endorsing it."