Ageism and no pay

London Fashion Week 2019. Image from LFW19 website.

London Fashion Week is upon us, with several high profile shows scheduled for today (I am delighted to announce that I will be walking for IA on Tuesday 19th as part of ON/OFF).  There are a number of initiatives taking place aimed at highlighting the need for diversity in fashion, even though there is a general consensus that diversity has now been achieved.
But no, I would not say it has. There are also other issues that need to be more openly discussed, such as financial exploitation.  A recent article by Lucy Hooker highlights the plight of fashion models who run up debts with their agency. In France Model Law was founded last year, along the lines of Model Alliance in New York to discuss the problems surrounding exploitation of models, including low pay. In the UK we have Equity Models though not everyone seems to be aware of it.
Whereas the subject of sexual harassment and modelling has been widely debated, that of low pay and /or no pay has not received the same attention.  I believe it should.
Older models are particularly vulnerable, especially those who are just beginning  a modelling career.  Who would have thought? Older models are usually experienced professionals in other fields and yet when it comes to modelling they can be utterly naive.  Many older models choose not be agency represented, believing that what they do is just a sideline, that it is mainly for fun and that it is a privilege to be asked to model. Wrong. Some decide that being with more than one agency is the answer to getting more work. Wrong again. But let's deal with these issues one at a time. Let's first discuss no pay.

From Age of No Retirement

There are several magazines and commercial enterprises that purport to fight ageism and yet, when they ask older women to model they do not pay. Why would they? As someone said, off the record, they would never pay any model for editorials since they are  inundated with requests from women who want to model, or models who desperately want to be seen.
Several  people are out there to profit from the lack of visibility of older women, by promising a more equal fashion, aimed at providing fashionable choices for older women, in the common fight against ageism.  They would regularly do 'street casting' using older unknowns who are keen to see themselves in print and not paying them a penny, offering a fun day out. Their products of course bear a high price tag.
 I have been through all this myself, at various stages in my career. I have modelled for free countless times and often never even got images.
It's all done in the name of 'fighting ageism'  or 'promoting diversity'.
Here I should hasten to clarify that there are people out there who are campaigning seriously for changes in the industry.
Models of Diversity has been  at the forefront of such a fight for a number of years.  There is also Age of No Retirement whose goal is to "create a world where our age does not define us".  I have to say that whenever MoD asked me to model, aside from campaigning,  I was always compensated - not millions, obviously, but a fair wage for a day's work.

From a 2017 lookbook shoot for Robyn of Bernini Group, Shanghai, courtesy of Models of Diversity. 

As I said earlier, it seems that the idea of diversity in the fashion industry is now a non-issue, everyone is convinced that we have achieved everything.  All Walks used to be very active campaigning in colleges but has now  taken a break Yet we need such organisations a lot more than we need  business minded individuals who are there to make a profit out of diversity and ageism in particular, on the skin of models. 
I would like to tell older models to hang on in there and please, request a payment or some form of compensation whenever you are asked to do a job. Beware of those who fight ageism and sell their wares using your image, for free. Think ahead of rights and permissions. Are you giving your image away in perpetuity? Are you being compensated?
When you model you do a job. It might be fun, it might be a boost to your ego to see yourself in print or even in an ad, but remember, it is work. At the very least you should be paid expenses and the NMW.