Sex & Relationships

Modest modeling guru Eileen Ford lost out to fashion’s sexification

Eileen Ford, who died Thursday at age 92, was the self-appointed godmother of modeling.

Among the models Eileen represented, stunner Suzy Parker.Getty Images

Tiny and pretty, tightly wound, she was a know-it-all with an answer for everything — eight answers at once if need be. She was typically photographed, furrow-browed and talking, with two phones draped over her shoulders, another to her ear and a fourth being handed to her by her dutiful husband, Jerry.

The Fords founded their eponymous modeling agency in 1947 as an answer to the male-dominated industry, offering career guidance and honest bookkeeping — and the promise models wouldn’t be hit on by the owner. She was a North Shore of Long Island native, Barnard College graduate and, briefly, a model. He was the naval officer with whom she eloped.

Together, they appeared to be the moral exemplars of modeling, insisting that underage and foreign models live with them in their own home. They offered diet advice, doctors and dermatologists, as well as hair and makeup lessons (for there were no hair or makeup artists then), and pressed their charges to improve themselves by studying culture, speech, dancing, acting and languages. They banned their models from late-night carousing and hawking deodorant.

Eileen stood up for the models, threatening photographers who were late or went over time. Her gifts were her eye and her calendar.

“I was very good at recommending models,” she once told me. “And I’m a fanatic about getting people to the right place at the right time.”

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29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Christie Brinkley: Brinkley’s long modeling career started after being discovered by Ford herself.AP
29 careers launched by Ford Models
Anderson Cooper: The news anchor (left) was signed at age 10 and in his three-year modeling career, he worked for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy’s.Getty Images
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29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Lindsay Lohan: Lohan was only 3-years-old when her modeling career began.WireImage
Amanda Bynes: Before her crazy courtroom antics and even before her Nickelodeon career, Bynes was signed by Ford Models at age 13.Everett Collection
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Janice Dickinson: The self-proclaimed “world’s first supermodel” was signed by Ford in 1978 but eventually defected with 20 others to start John Casablancas’ upstart Elite Model Management.Getty Images
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Naomi Campbell: The British model was scouted at age 15.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Ford Models
Beverly Johnson: Johnson, the first African-American woman to appear on the cover of Vogue, tweeted Thursday: “Eileen Ford of the great Ford Modeling Agency passed yesterday. The Ford Agency was my first agent.”Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Lana Del Rey: Back when she went by her given name, Lizzy Grant, the sultry singer was a Ford model, appearing in a Keds ad.Startraks Photo
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29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Brooke Shields: Ford signed Shields as a child model and once said about her: “She is a professional child and unique. She looks like an adult and thinks like one.”
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Ali MacGraw: MacGraw’s successful modeling career was launched in the 1960s. She went on to be nominated for an Oscar for 1970’s “Love Story.”Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Christy Turlington Burns: The brunette beauty said this about Ford’s death Thursday: “I was fortunate to have worked in the industry at a time when legends like Eileen Ford were still reigning. Being a part of the Ford Agency when I began my career was truly special. I will always remember Eileen and her indomitable presence with fondness and gratitude.”Getty Images
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29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Jerry Hall: Hall signed with Ford in 1981 and again in 2009, at age 52.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Kim Basinger: Basinger was signed at age 16. Her 18-year-old daughter, Ireland Baldwin, has followed in her footsteps.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Brooke Burke: Before working as a TV host, Burke was a model represented by Ford.WireImage
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29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Alek Wek: South Sudanese British model Wek signed with Ford in 1996.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Jane Fonda: Before she became an actress and fitness guru, Fonda was a model.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Bebe Buell: Liv Tyler’s mom was discovered after her own mother mailed in her photos to Ford.Getty Images
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29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Cheryl Tiegs: The model, who made a splash on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue twice, was a star of the 1970s.Everett Collection
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Candice Bergen: Pre-“Murphy Brown,” Bergen was discovered by Ford.AP
Sharon Stone: After winning the title of Miss Crawford County in Meadville, Pa., Stone scored a modeling contract.Everett Collection
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29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Elle Macpherson: The Australian model went on to grace the covers of Cosmopolitan, Elle, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Rene Russo: Legend has it that a 17-year-old Russo was spotted by an agent at a 1972 Rolling Stones concert and, months later, was signed to Ford.WireImage
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Lauren Hutton: The model told Vogue that Eileen Ford agreed to take her on if she fixed the crook in her nose and a gap in her teeth.Getty Images
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Karen Graham: Ford discovered Graham at a Manhattan department store, and the stunner went on to become the first face of Estee Lauder.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Courteney Cox: “Friends” star Courteney Cox was discovered by Ford Models in 1982 and appeared on the covers of Tiger Beat and Young Miss magazines.Getty Images
Suzy Parker: The model and actress’ sister, Dorian, introduced her to Eileen Ford. She went on to become a star in the 1950s.Getty Images
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Martha Stewart: Ford represented a stunning young Stewart in the ’60s.EPA
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Jean Shrimpton: The doe-eyed British model was a star of the ’60s.Getty Images
29 careers launched by Eileen Ford
Margaux Hemingway: The granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway scored a then-unprecedented million-dollar contract as the face of Faberge’s Babe perfume in the 1970s.Corbis
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She represented the faces of five decades: from Dovima, Dorian Leigh, Suzy Parker and Jean Patchett (in the ’40s and ’50s), through Jean Shrimpton, Donna Mitchell and Lauren Hutton (in the ’60s and ’70s) to Renee Simonsen, Christy Turlington and Amber Valleta in the years before her mid-’90s retirement.

Image was all. So when Jerry Ford had an affair with one of their models, and Eileen caught on and forced him to choose, the scandal was hushed up and the model in question even remained on the Ford books as Jerry ­returned to Eileen, staying by her side until his death six years ago.

But real life didn’t bend to ­Eileen Ford’s desires as thoroughly as her husband did. In the early ’70s, Ford’s unchallenged rule over modeling was threatened by a brash newcomer, John Casablancas, the handsome, charming, well-educated child of wealthy Spaniards. And he had a personal as well as a professional interest in his charges.

Supermodel Christy Turlington, circa 1990.Getty Images

As his Elite Model firm grew, the look of fashion changed from the Ford-era’s demure cashmere twin-set sweaters and pearls to girls on all fours or legs spread in miniskirts and open shirts and, sometimes, nothing.

Casablancas considered himself honest. “I said to models, ‘I’m going to sell you like women, I’m going to bring out the sex appeal and sensuality, and we’re ­going to make more money,’ ” he later boasted. The difference was simple, he continued: “Ford was a prude, and I was not.”

He was also happy to point out what he deemed Ford’s hypocrisy. Sure, Eileen’s bookers kept tabs on the younger girls. But Eileen and Jerry also introduced their older charges to wealthy men.

“There were hangers-on who wanted to date models, but also a lot of models who wanted to date men,” one Ford employee told me. “You screened people. Eileen did it.”

She loved to play matchmaker. “Eileen wanted all her girls to marry rich husbands,” says April Ducksbury, a London agent. “Then she’d have social friends who were loyal and faithful to her, because not only had they been her models but she found them a husband.”

Ultimately, Ford Models was out-sexed. The company would stage a comeback in the early 1990s when Eileen and Jerry took a step back and let their daughter Katie take charge of the business. But it never appeared that her heart was in it the way her mother’s had so long been. Eventually it was bought out by investors. Though still a great name, Ford ceased to be a modeling powerhouse.

When I last spoke to Eileen Ford in 2011, she seemed both baffled and saddened by the turn of events. “I don’t even know who’s running it,” she said. “They fired everyone I knew.”

Adapted from “Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,” copyright © 1995, 2003, 2011 by Michael Gross. Reprinted by permission of It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.