Although he was not implicated in allegations of wrongdoing, in 2000 he stood down as chairman of the world’s biggest model agency following a controversial undercover BBC documentary about Elite, which showed the company’s European agents boasting of their drug use and sexual conquests of young models. The founder of the Elite Model Management agency was as famous for his playboy lifestyle and good looks as for the panache which revolutionised the comparatively staid world of international glamour in the 1970s.Īlthough he revelled in the company of beautiful women, he was later to publicly turn on some of his most successful protégés, on whose behalf he had helped negotiate stratospheric fees, and to rue his invention of the entire supermodel phenomenon. Igniting even more controversy in 1993, he married a young 17 year old by the name of Aline Wermelinger when she was an entrant in Elite’s “Look of the Year” modeling contest in Rio de Janiero, Brazil and they later had three children together.John Casablancas, the man credited with creating the era of the supermodel by launching the careers of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, has died at the age of 70. The marriage soon ended and Casablancas was tied to many gorgeous women and known to romp around with the beautiful young models he worked with including his very public affair with 16 year old Stephanie Seymour. Christjansen in 1978 and they soon after had a son who they named Julian. While the business was booming, Casablancas married his model girlfriend Ms. The lawsuits were unsuccessful and only seemed to have catapulted the names of John Casablancas and the Elite Model Management into the world of high fashion, glitz, glamor and lots of money.
Casablancas knew he and his business had to have a presence in the fashion capital of the world to hit it big, so in 1977 he moved back to New York and opened his offices there shortly before Ford and Wilhemina tried to sue Elite for $10 millioin saying Casablancas was infringing on their turf.
In 1971 he and a former schoolmate from Le Rosey by the name of Alain Kittler announced that they were founding a new modeling agency that would focus on promoting only elite models which is why they decided to name the company Elite Model Management. He his first modeling business in 1969 and named it Elysee 3 after his Paris phone number. When she expressed to him how unhappy she was with her modeling agency it inspired him to start a business that would represent both photographers and models. Their marriage didn’t last long, although they did have one child during their short union who they named Cecile.Īfter having problems in their marriage around the year 1967, John found himself living in a small hotel when he met a young 19 year old model by the name of Jeanette Christjansen who was on assignment for Gunnar Larsen, a popular photographer, and soon began having an affair with her. He then married his French girlfriend Marie-Christine against his father’s wishes and they both lived in Brazil for a few years before returning to Paris where he took a public relations job with her brother at an architecture firm. This is when he started picking up jobs in finance, public relations and real estate, even accepting a position as a marketing manager for a Coca-Cola factory in Brazil at the age of 20 offered to him by the mother of a former classmate.
When he was 8 years old, young John was sent to Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland and then attended multiple universities in Europe where he studied economics, but never graduated. His parents had both fled to the United States during the 1930’s to escape the Spanish Civil War where his father Fernando was a popular textile businessman in the large city of Sabadell, Spain. The youngest of three children, John Casablancas was born in Manhattan, New York on Decemto Fernando and Antonia Casablancas.
0 kommentar(er)
