From the WSJ Opinion Archives
SCENE & HEARD
Model Injustice
What are Ashcroft's trustbusters doing on New York's catwalks?
Several top modeling agencies are fending off the unsubtle advances of the Justice Department's antitrust division, which suspects price-fixing in the market for the services of young ladies. The victims are not, of course, practitioners of the world's oldest profession. They are the dewy young things who float past velvet ropes in Manhattan and seemingly want for nothing--except maybe an order of onion rings to go with their Marlboro Lights.
These specimens, of which New York seems to attract an unlimited number, are the ostensible dupes of what Justice believes is collusion by agencies to charge models the same amount for the privilege of being sent out on fashion shoots, or to trade shows--or whatever it is models do. (Naive question: Aren't there victims of real exploitation whose needs the department should minister to first?)
The investigation follows on the teetering heels of a class-action suit, focusing on whether agencies fixed models' commission rates at 20%, thus overstepping the 10% allowed to employment agencies by law. (The moral: A state-mandated fixed price at 10% is great; a 20% rate driven by the market is price fixing!) The lead plaintiff, ex-model Carolyn Fears, has said that when she was "first starting" she was shocked by the chunk cut from her paycheck by the Ford agency. From one paycheck, she huffs, the 20% cut amounted to $1,500! Simple math (not beyond a model) suggests that left her with $6,000.
The modeling industry is a hardscrabble place for women who depend on their looks for pay. But it's also tough on business. Model agencies, unlike ordinary job agencies, must absorb a lot of upfront cost in grooming their protégées. A 15-year-old from Podunk or Poland doesn't know how to show up for an appointment, or respect the value of other people's time. Every shoot requires an army of expensive shutterbugs, lighting people and stylists, who can get paid thousands an hour whether or not the prop shows up ready to work.
Prices tend to be identical in industries that deal in "commodities," where one product is perfectly substitutable for another, which should tell you something. What one fashion agency is selling is not very different from what another sells. Furthermore, such commodity industries with large investment costs tend to be susceptible to charges of price fixing, which should tell you something too. Their sunk costs and absence of market power makes them easily taken advantage of by clients. This make modeling much like airlines and other industries with high fixed costs selling a use-it-or-lose-it commodity: easy for customers to gouge by running prices down below full long-term costs. A truism of price-fixing prosecutions is that the target industries are often losing money, not making it.
Despite how peerless a model looks wafting down Prince Street, Ford's Web site offers a cookie-cutter checklist for a successful model: Between 5-foot-9 and 5-foot-11, and willowy. The agency is blunt: "Clothing for runway shows and magazine shoots tends to come in one size. If you can't fit into a designer's garments, you will face difficulty in finding work." That said, the raw material is abundant; it even seeks you out. But models are highly perishable; agencies have only a short time to recoup their investment in turning awkward fillies into thoroughbreds for a discriminating and impatient clientele.
According to the suit, 95% of models at top agencies are charged the 20% cut. The ones who aren't are those with faces known to the public. These are the golden girls who keep agencies solvent, who maintain the brand's prestige and allow investment in the next crop of peaches. Those who don't make the exalted grade would probably find fewer opportunities in the modeling business if the agencies couldn't sustain a commission structure that made their investment in representing them profitable.
A final philosophical question: Whose business is it really what modeling agencies charge for their services? They don't own an "essential facility" necessary for life and well-being. The investigators should think hard about what public purpose is served by chasing down people who've entered into voluntary contractual relationships in a business that is beyond the Justice Department (or anyone else) to make economic sense of.
"Those who create," Coco Chanel said, "are rare. Those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger." That is the bureaucrat's ode, illustrated again by the antitrust division's attempt to force another industry into a facile economic mold.
Ms. Levey is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.
