Washington post archives: article
the improbable dream one local modeling school teaches the basics for a price, but some critics say its results are not a pretty sight
Robin Givhan Washington Post Staff Writer
December 2,1996; Page C1
It can begin innocently enough. A friend's casual compliments: You're so pretty, so handsome. You could be a model. Such damage those words can do.
With the seed planted, wishful thinkers are easily tempted by the promises of modeling contests, classes and photography sessions. They listen to wild but true tales of how top models were discovered. They try to separate the reality from the hyperbole, the routine from the extraordinary. But there are no guidelines, no rules, few standards. While other fields tend to reward those with youthful tenacity, the modeling industry feeds on them.
Creative Talent Management Inc., a local modeling school, has had an insatiable appetite.
With about 140 complaints lodged against it in the last year and a half with the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. And the Fairfax County Department of Consumer Affairs, the McLean company has emerged as one of the most controversial in the local modeling industry. Creative Talent advertises extensively for both potential models and model scouts.
Customers have complained of misleading advertising, high-pressure sales tactics, overzealous promises, misrepresentation of In Fairfax County alone, Creative Talent has refunded almost $48,000 to consumers. And this month, company President Ralph Bell signed a pledge that
the school will not engage in practices that violate the Virginia Consumer Protection Act. The assurance is not an admission of any wrongdoing.
The company says there were a few problems due to extraordinary growth over a year ago, but that they were solved quickly. More recent complaints, they say, are invalid. "Consumer agencies didn't cause me The modeling industry operates in a vast gray region in which what is
legal and what is ethical sometimes aren't the same. The system favors those with obvious and enormous potential and often takes advantage of or misleads those whose biggest assets are naivete and raw desire.
There have never been predictable steps to becoming a model.intellectually, most folks understand that classic mannequins such as Naomi Campbell or Nadja Auermann, with that height, those legs and such sharp cheekbones, are
born, not made. But with the increasing presence in fashion of models who aren't traditional, statuesque beauties — models such as Kate Moss and Stella Tennant — impossible dreams seem a little more attainable.
The celebrity status of models continues to balloon, making legend of their disparate roads to fame. Moss was plucked from New York's Kennedy Airport. Veronica Webb was discovered in a SoHo boutique. Karen Alexander pounded the pavement. Yasmeen Ghauri got started after she was spotted in a Toronto hair salon. Shalom Harlow was discovered at a Cure concert. Campbell was deemed
model material as she walked through London's Covent Garden wearing her school uniform. Stephanie Seymour and Karen Mulder both got started by entering modeling contests. Tyson Beckford was spotted playing basketball.
Is being discovered by a scout while standing on a street corner in Washington any less plausible?
Gustavo Soto-Rosa was out partying one evening at a local dance club when a couple approached him bearing an enticing little card. They were scouts who thought Soto-Rosa had modeling potential and invited him to Creative
Talent for an interview.
Tall (6 feet 3) and good-looking, Soto-Rosa had been told before that he should model. The 37-year-old didn't have any visions of becoming the next face of Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren. He just thought he might be able to earn extra cash and have some fun at the same time. He made an appointment.
A 26-year-old woman was approached on a Washington street by a smooth-talking guy who suggested she visit Creative Talent for an interview.
He snapped out a card identifying him as a scout. He reeled off examples of daily earnings, up to $1,000 an hour for a national print ad. She decided to take him up on his offer, then suspected something was fishy after being asked to make a $350 deposit just to go through an
evaluation process. She was too embarrassed to allow her name to be used.
A 36-year-old, 5-foot-9, attractive freelance writer, wife and mother was shopping at Mazza Gallerie when a scout gave her a card from Creative Talent. She made an appointment at the school.
"I thought, Oh, it would be a funny story, ' " she says.
"I went out of curiosity."
"When I said, I can't sign something if I don't talk to my
husband, ' there was a whole shift in tone in the interview." She says she was hustled out the door.
She doesn't want her name used for fear of being sued. Creative Talent requested that resolved complaints be withdrawn from their file. The consumer agencies refused. Settlements with former clients required that they sign non-disclosure agreements.
Soto-Rosa waited for his turn at the offices of Creative Talent. There was no conversation, but attractive men and women strolled from one room to another.
Everything looked efficient, professional, right. Finally Soto-Rosa's turn came, and, like all those before him, he was escorted into an interview room. A video camera secretly records these conversations.
"We archive the tapes, " Bell says, "in case of any
type of dispute." The interview process has several steps, including being asked to make snap decisions about payments of several hundred dollars. "I went through the
interview in which they would tell you if they thought you had a future, " Soto-Rosa says.
"At that point they ask you if you want them to take your
picture or not.
"I couldn't think it over and come back the next day to say yes or no, " Soto-Rosa says. "They said they wouldn't guarantee it, but the majority of people who went through {the workshop} got jobs. Or at least they alluded to that."
So he decided to have pictures taken and gave Creative Talent an imprint of his credit card. He remembers a fee of about $225. He was videotaped, this time knowingly, reading through a tongue twister. The interviewer asked him to name his greatest achievement. "I said, basically, that I don't take advantage of people." Before he went home, he scheduled his second appointment.
"If you didn't get selected then they would return the
money, " he says. "If you did get selected, it meant that you'd keep going with {the program}."
When he returned to hear what the "selection committee" had recommended, his pictures were laid out on a desk. He never saw the videotape. He kept the photos.
"They were rejecting me for fashion and accepting me for TV. They said my look was too commercial for fashion, " he says. "Now they give you a year to make up your mind. That's where it stopped. At the $225. My feeling was that
they were actually looking for people, but in the process, they were going to make money.
"To this day, I don't know if it was a scam or not, " he
says. "I think it's a mixture."
The Fairfax County Department of Consumer Affairs has received 75 complaints against Creative Talent since July, 1995. About half alleged misrepresentation on the part of the company, a violation of the Virginia Consumer Protection Act. High-pressure sales tactics, though they may be unethical, are not illegal. None of the complaints involved customers who had completed the workshops, which Bell says range in price from $800 to $1,200 each.
The county was concerned that talent scouts were blatantly
misrepresenting what clients could expect from Creative Talent, says Paulette Neas, deputy chief of investigation and licensing at the Department of Consumer Affairs.
The scouts and company ads, she says, were giving people the impression that they were being invited in for a job interview and not just to sign up for a workshop.
The Federal Trade Commission has made inquiries about the company and its claims. And the Better Business Bureau has received about 70 complaints from consumers who have had run-ins with the company. "It has been in the last
year and a half, since about May '95, that we've been getting numerous inquiries, " says Dave Johnson, vice president of operations for the BBB of metro Washington.
"This has been the most dramatic file experience we've had in the area in the model industry, " Johnson says.
One staff member from the Better Business Bureau, posing as a potential model, visited Creative Talent. The bureau found that "everyone is a vice president, " Johnson says. The staff member was "told there was lots of work available and that she had a look they could use. She couldn't do runway, but was good for commercial, print and acting, " Johnson says.
"People who are illiterate couldn't be actors, but pretty much anyone else could go through that training."
Facing the Facts The workshops sold by Creative Talent Management Inc. Were established 15 years ago by Tricia Erickson, owner and founder of the Erickson Agency.
The walls of the agency, situated in a maze of garden-style office buildings in McLean, are covered with composites, the small portrait cards that are a model's resume.in the pictures, the models stare out from expensively crafted shadows, their faces forming suggestive, hire-me expressions.
They have names like Casondra, Caitlan, Tamara and Cartier. Erickson has dashed in from her home office and so is casually dressed in a sweat shirt. Her hair is shoulder-length and platinum and her features are fine.
She looks as if a long time ago she might have been one of
those young girls whose friends told her to model; she never did. The businesswoman has a teenager's voice.
Erickson says she established the training program because she became tired of seeing the same faces repeatedly used in local fashion shoots and advertisements. The workshops were her way of discovering and training new models. Setting up the program was a risk, she says, because model training "is a dirty word."
That negative reputation comes from the rarity of someone
actually making the transformation from obscurity to the cover of a national magazine, despite having spent hundreds or eventhousands of dollars and many hours on training.
"The odds are against them if they're not a particular size and don't have a fashion look from head to toe, " Erickson says. At her agency, the basic requirements for a fashion model include good teeth and skin. Women's hips should measure no more than 36 inches around at the widest point, and their height should fall between 5 feet 9 and 6 feet. Men should stand between 6 feet and 6 feet 3 and wear a 40R to 42L jacket. After that, it's still a matter of looks, timing, perseverance and personality.
For the few who are blessed, entering the modeling business comes cheap. Everyone else pays. When model agents think they've just spotted the next Kate Moss, they
start writing checks. Erickson thinks she spotted her star model at Legal Sea Foods in Tysons Corner. "There was a father, daughter and mother. The daughter had a completely perfect face. I said, No way is she 5 feet 9.'
"Then she stood up. She's 5 feet 10 and perfect from head to toe."
Erickson handed the waiter a $5 bill and asked him to bring the family over to meet her. The girl's name is Vibeke Mollegaard and she's 14. The agency calls her Vibs.
"I want to put her under an eight-year contract. I'm going to get her trained in runway, get her trained in makeup application and send her to top photographers, " Erickson says.
"I'll pay for everything. Normally, I don't.
"The biggest misconception is that if you have a look that
someone wants, they should pay for you, " Erickson says. "I think this is the only business that's expected to do everything for free."
But the fact is, when top agencies see a girl they think has a real chance to make it (and generate huge fees down the road), they are willing to pay for runway lessons, housing, transportation, pictures, you name it.
"If {a girl} comes off the street into Elite and we think she has potential, she doesn't need to pay for classes, " says Monique Pillard, director of New York's powerhouse Elite Models, which represents Linda Evangelista, Shalom
Harlow, Amber Valletta and Trish Goff, among others.
"Somewhere down the line, she may take runway classes, which she doesn't pay for, " Pillard says. "We absolutely bear the burden. If a girl has talent and potential to become a model, of course, we help.
"It's a scam of {the model} paying $1,000 or $2,000, " she
says. "That's {expletive}."
But how much is a boost of confidence worth?
Model Linda Overheu started her career as a workshop student. She was 13; she's now 23 and still modeling.
The workshops, she says, taught her skin-care and makeup techniques at an early age. She learned how to walk on the runway, an endeavor that requires grace, confidence, presence and balance. It involves knowing how to walk
directly into the firing line of photographers' flashes without flinching.
It means not looking down even while sashaying in a full-length evening gown with a train. The runway walk may not require a university degree, but it takes practice to do it well.
"It's possible I could have made it without {the workshops}, but they gave me a lot more confidence, " Overheu says.
Name Game
In July of '95, the training portion of the Erickson Agency was split off and named Erickson Talent Management, and Erickson sold it to her second husband, Ralph Bell. The customer complaints rolled in.
In January, Bell changed the company name to Creative Artists Inc., to further distinguish it from the modeling agency. (It was never related to the influential Creative Artists Agency, which represents stars such as Tom Cruise and Sharon Stone.) The complaints continued. And in October, the company's name was changed yet again to Creative Talent Management Inc.
"I feel like a lot of the problems we had were from
growth, " Bell says.
"When we first started the {separate training} program, it took off like a rocket. We changed so many things. It was a question of high volume."
Bell sits behind his desk in a bland Creative Talent classroom. His sandy hair slides back in a slick wave. Bell does not rise to offer greetings, hands out no business cards. His resume includes professional sports
management and general contracting. He has no fashion background.
The modeling business, Bell says, "is cutthroat and vicious.
"What determines your slice of the pie is how aggressively you market."
The company advertises regularly for model scouts and models. And while Bell emphasizes that Creative Talent is not an employment agency for models — and has since changed its ads to reflect the emphasis on training —
that impression lingers. Some clients still think that the school will work to secure jobs for its students.
Lisa Samuel came to Creative Talent with a girlfriend who had been stopped by one of the model scouts.
"One of the assistant vice presidents actually told me she was interested in doing some commercial, industrial stuff with me, " Samuel says.
"The company is really great. They take a lot of time with you. They're very selective. I saw a lot of people coming and going, and I could tell they were looking for
a certain quality."
"{The company} works like an agent would, " she continues.
"They are responsible for getting jobs, but they're not liable because it's up to the {employer} to pick the person. From what I understand, Creative will send your portfolio to a client and the client will select who they want.
{Creative} is putting you into the bidding."
Wrong.
Bell says he does not know how many, if any, graduates have gone on to sign with modeling agencies. He says he does not know how many students have stayed in the business and have gotten significant jobs. The success
rate of Creative Talent students appears to be virtually undocumented.
"If a graduate gets a job or two a year, that's a great
success, " Bell says.
"We're like a working models development company. We're not producing Cindy Crawford. People want to do this for fun and excitement, and maybe make a little extra money."
The line separating the school from the agency remains blurred enough that some students say they have assumed that upon graduation from Creative Talent's programs, they'll automatically be signed up by the Erickson Agency. Not true.
Tricia Erickson serves on the Creative Talent review board for prospective models. Mail bags filled with applicants' photographs land with a thud on her desk, awaiting her approval or rejection. She explains Creative
Talent's mission. "My husband's company protects consumers, " she says. "Part of what they do on a daily basis is to educate people on why they can or can't model. She offers statistics on the numbers of people who pass through Creative Talent in a year: 12,000 screened, 7,000accepted. And in a letter dated April 17,1996, included in an information packet for a prospective
Creative trainee, Erickson writes to her husband, Bell, "Yours is a logical, honest and straightforward development program which has a proven track record."
But the two magazines are listed on the company prospectus handed out during the sales pitch. More than 100 films, commercials, television shows, retailers, magazines and newspapers are named — including the Washington Post Style section, which has hired models from the Erickson Agency but has never worked with Creative.
The list was compiled over 15 years, say Bell and Erickson, dating back to when the training program was part of the Erickson Agency. Erickson says she has no recollection of which local models worked for the key fashion magazines, but is sure they have. She says the prospectus is an accurate list of employers who have hired Erickson talent. Model editors at Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazines contacted for this story said they have never heard of the Erickson Agency.
Appearance Is Everything The advertisement read: "Top talent management company in metro area seeks talent scouts. If you would like a career consisting of attending
events, a luxurious standard of living and enjoying the finer things in life, this is the job for you."
It sounded good to Richard de Beauvoir.
A freelance photographer with an interest in the entertainment industry but no fashion background, de Beauvoir called Creative Talent for an interview.
His training lasted about a week, and in that time he was supposed to hand out 430 cards to potential models. He was told that if he worked a 50-hour week handing out cards, his estimated average earnings could range from
$40,000 to $70,000 per year. Scouts, who are independent contractors, are paid based on the number of clients who come into the school and make a deposit.De Beauvoir received a list of hot spots in which to scout talent.
Nightclubs such as the Black Cat, 9:30 and the 18th Street Lounge were included. Scouts were encouraged to go to restaurants like Sesto Senso and B. Smith's. Mazza Gallerie was a good place for scouting. So was Old Town
Alexandria, but only at lunch time and on weekends; the handout said so. The best Metro stops were Farragut West and Dupont Circle.
The temptation, de Beauvoir says, is to simply dole out as many cards as possible to increase one's odds of hitting the jackpot.
"I worked in Alexandria, Georgetown, Capitol Hill. I didn't approach anyone who I thought couldn't pay or who I didn't think had a chance, " he says.
"{But} just about anybody with average looks could be introduced into the program."
As for the skill of the scouts, which Bell calls the first line of quality control: "Any monkey could do that, " de Beauvoir reports.
"You say, You have the right looks we're looking for right now.' "
De Beauvoir has a penchant for numbers, notes and order. When he asked his instructors about the success rate of the program, he says no one could give him any statistics. He couldn't get a clear sense of the fee
structure for the workshops. "I didn't feel the whole thing was 100 percent legitimate, " he says. "I'm very much concerned that people are being taken in. That's
part of what turned me off."
The other concern was that he had no way of knowing for sure how many folks, bearing one of his cards, came in and made a deposit. After one week, he hadn't made a dime and he'd spent about $100 of his own money.
Dream On
Vanity is a great motivator and flattery a powerful opiate. They can turn healthy skepticism into gullibility. Separate a wise man from his money.
Some people want to believe that with good looks, hard work and a little luck they can choose to become a model. But no, they have to be chosen. They cling to the notion that the model industry is fair, logical and predictable. It is not. The dreamers have faith. The hucksters sell
hope.
"You need {dreamers} in any industry, " Bell says. "You
have to temper that with realism."
"I'm very proud of this program. I think we're making an impact in Washington, " Bell continues. "I don't care what people say about it. I sleep well at night."
Cutline: So you want to be a model: Gustavo Soto-Rosa, center, surrounded by models who took local training workshops.
Mixed reviews: "To this day, I don't know if it was a scam or not, " says Gustavo Soto-Rosa, above, of his brush with the world of modeling via Creative Talent Management. But Linda Overheu, left, who's been in that world for a decade, has a different take. "It's possible I
could have made it without {the workshops}, but they gave me a lot more confidence."
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