A leading modeling agency got a post-Fashion Week surprise yesterday — a $50 million suit filed by a former intern.
Elite Model Management is blasted in court papers as a “penny-pinching” company that exploits fashionista wannabes eager to build up their résumés and “too afraid to ask for compensation.”
Plaintiff Dajia Davenport of Manhattan, who interned for Elite during the summer of 2010, alleges that the company “deliberately misclassifies its interns as exempt from wage requirements,” then makes them work more than 40 hours a week, including weekends.
One of Davenport’s lawyers, Richard Roth, accused the agency, which launched the careers of supermodels including Cindy Crawford and Gisele Bundchen, of using “young, unpaid interns to bolster its figures — and we are not talking about bodily figures.”
Elite didn’t respond to requests for comment.