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Indeed. Her modeling fees can run as high as $10,000 a day, and she is about to sign a $1 million contract with Calvin Klein, who is convinced that he has made "a major statement" with the jeans ads. What is astonishing about these huge sums of money is that although they are outlandish, they are not unheard of. No advertiser wants to make a minor statement, and the major ones run into six or seven figures. Lauren Hutton in 1973 signed an exclusive contract with Revlon. Tiegs has a two-year deal with Sears under which she lends her name to a line of jeans and tops and receives more than $1 million, plus a share of the profits. The fine-boned Norwegian-American brunette who calls herself Clotilde is the Shiseido cosmetics girl in Japan and the Ralph Lauren girl in the U.S. (In this business in which young girls are women, the women are still girls; the terminology of liberation seems to have had no effect.) Some 5,000 of the 15,000 models who work in New York City make $60,000 to $80,000 a year, and perhaps 120 top models earn up to $150,000. But don't go away; there is also a cadre of about 60 top, top models who may earn $350,000 annually. Chief among these are such radiant blonds as Kim Alexis and SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Swimsuit Siren Christie Brinkley. It is these top-tops who may be lucky enough to sign the exclusive cosmetic contracts and break into the really big money. The ultimate stars of the contract girls, in turn, will come to be referred to with awe as "great, great" models — Tiegs and Hutton, for example, and now maybe Brooke.
With all this adorable money wafting around, it is obvious that Eileen Ford's industry is in better shape than Henry Ford's.
The four major New York agencies — besides Ford, Zoli and Elite, there is the No. 2-ranked Wilhelmina Models Inc. — plus some 15 to 20 smaller outfits account for close to $50 million in annual billings. The action has attracted Sports Management Tycoon Mark McCormack, whose International Management Group represents such superstars as Bjorn Borg and Arnold Palmer. McCormack has now moved into modeling with agencies in London and Tokyo, and last month launched a New York outlet, International Legends.
Nor is the business in need of any protectionist legislation.
The balance of exports is heavily in favor of the U.S., which is flooding the world market with superb teeth, great bones and fresh skin. More than 60% of the top models working in Paris, Hamburg and Munich are American. A high proportion of the models on the runways and in the photographic studios of Milan's fashion industry are from the U.S. Japanese talent scouts are so avid for fresh faces that they hang around schoolyards hoping to lure pretty young Americans and other gaijins (foreigners) into the model industry; the proper International School of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo has had to issue a stern advisory to parents that it disapproves of this practice. In England, however, where Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton got their start, brutal taxes have persuaded most of the internationally known photographers to emigrate, and the business no longer flourishes.