How do you recruit models into an agency?
Each agency has its own methods of scouting. If you are a well established agency, you will have ties abroad with other established agencies where you will barter your new faces against theirs. For example, I gave Naomi Campbell to Fords and in return I got Christy Turlington, so it was a really good way to scout, right on the right level. The new faces division will communicate with their new faces division and you swap girls, you barter around the world. However, the strength of a model agency comes from its home grown talent. New faces divisions will go and scout in shopping malls, in Top Shop on a Saturday afternoon and rock festivals, and it's almost a pain in the neck; it costs a lot of money and it's sometimes very fruitless. You can spend days in a shopping mall boring yourself to tears where your vision goes a bit skew-whiff cause then you think, "God, I'm so desperate, she's 5'8", isn't she lovely?" You get the pictures home and think that she wasn't really, it's just that I was going gaga and getting bored. There are also model conventions around where people apply to be seen by agents. You do what it takes as a model booker. A good scout will scout wherever she is, whether she's on holiday, at an airport or on the tube; you don't stop scouting because your business depends on your talent.
