She says an organiser told her that if she refused, she would be excluded from the competition. Photograph: Nina Berman/NOORĪnother contestant, who was 15 at the time, also remembers being asked to walk for Trump, Casablancas and other men on the boat in September 1992. I didn’t dance – I blew a kiss at them, spun around and walked away.”Ĭontestants wait to board the Spirit of New York yacht, September 1991. And she said, ‘No, you look great, take off your blazer and go and do it.’ So I walked down the stairs. “I said to her, ‘I don’t see why me going down the stairs and dancing in front of those two has anything to do with me becoming a model. “A woman at the agency was pushing me,” she recalls. Lee, an introverted teenager who loved to draw but hated school, was in New York for the first time. She recalls how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump, Casablancas and others. One of the girls on the boat was Shawna Lee, then a 14-year-old from a small town outside Toronto. On a similarly golden evening in early September that year, another group of contestants boarded the Spirit of New York, chartered for another Elite cruise. In 1992, Trump hosted the competition again. In 1991, he was a headline sponsor, throwing open the Plaza, his lavish, chateau-style hotel overlooking Central Park, transforming it into the main venue and accommodating the young models. Trump was closely involved in Casablancas’s competition. At stake was a life-changing prize: a $150,000 contract with the world’s then leading modelling agency, Elite Model Management, run by John Casablancas. They had travelled from around the world to compete in Elite’s Look of the Year competition, an annual event that had been running since 1983 and was already credited with launching the careers of Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen and Stephanie Seymour. "You have to live fashion to a certain extent and have you feet on the ground.The party aboard the Spirit of New York was one of several events that Donald Trump, then 45, attended with a group of 58 aspiring young models that September. "It has nothing to do with how long you have been in this business it has everything to do with your energy, enthusiasm and your eye," Perin told VOGUE.COM. The secret to their global success is listening to their charges and advising each in a way that is tailored to their needs and uniqueness. I have been scouting all over the capital and every day is different with a constant stream of new faces passing through the city each day." Elite has managed the careers of some of the world's biggest models: Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Karen Mulder, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks and Yasmin le Bon, among others, entrusted their careers to the agency. "There is currently a huge trend in the fashion industry for young English models," head scout Cesar Perin observes, "and we wanted to capitalise on fashion's love for London. Managing over 800 models from five continents, the agency operates in 36 key cities worldwide, from Paris, Milan and Rome, to Tokyo, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro, so it could be said that the London launch was overdue. THIRTY years after opening its doors in Paris, heavyweight global model agency Elite has finally opened the doors of its first London office.
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