Confessions of Britain’s top model agent
As the fashion industry battles through big changes, Bethan Holt speaks to Sarah Doukas, the agent who discovered Kate Moss
Sarah Doukas has just returned from a walking holiday in Portugal. Well, ostensibly it was a holiday. But the veteran model agent’s instinct for a new face cannot be diminished simply by being out of office so she approached a girl who caught her eye at the luggage carousel. “It drives Tim [her husband] mad,” she laughs, twiddling the antique crucifix around her neck.
She is also brimming with excitement about 20-year-old headscarf-wearing new discovery Shahira Yusuf, whose tweet: “I ain’t no Kendall Jenner but I’m a black Muslim girl from east London that’s about to finesse the modelling industry,” has picked up more than 125,000 retweets. “She can’t show much skin so 10 years ago everyone would have said that they can’t work with her but now it’s a new world. People are accepting and more creative.”
Yusuf is emblematic of a seismic shift in modelling that 60-year-old Doukas has had to get to grips with. “It’s been tough, this huge change has not been easy and I’m sure all businesses have gone through it,” she says of the challenges, from the rise of social media, the demand for diverse ages and sizes and the power of e-commerce (and its need for an endless supply of commercially effective models), which have rocked the industry.
Doukas founded Storm modelling agency after a brief stint as a model herself. “I thought, I can’t do that, I’m 5ft 3in. But if you get thrown opportunities, you should take them,” she remembers thinking when her own career took off in the early Eighties. “We’re so governed by this idea that a model has to be a minimum of 5ft 9in and uber skinny but it’s not true. My main objective is to turn everyone into a brand and an icon.”
It’s an attitude that means she has remained a powerhouse. Cindy Crawford is still on her books along with modern supermodels Liu
Wen, Behati Prinsloo and Toni Garrn. She can also lay claim to crafting the careers of Sophie Dahl, Cara Delevingne and, of course, Kate Moss.
Her close-knit gang includes her brother Simon, Storm’s director, and daughters Noelle – Senior Women’s Agent – and Gen, who is using her passion for the politically galvanised generation of post-millennials to form
Storm Creative, a new branch that searches out young influencers who have gained traction with niche audiences, like drag artist Sussi and women’s activist Liv Little. Simon’s project is Storm Vision, which handles the careers of the new generation of bloggers and Youtubers. The four of them together are a force to be reckoned with, crossfiring opinions like the sparkiest of meteor showers as we sit in a glass-walled office at the bustling agency. They spend weekends together, too. “They all come to our farm in the New Forest,” Doukas smiles. “We carry on talking work there but wherever we are, nothing is ever taken to heart. Whatever happens in here, stays here.” There’s a sense that the blend of work and family makes the relentless pursuit of the next big thing more like a fun adventure than a slog.
The latest challenge is how to respond to the harassment accusations that engulfed the modelling industry in the wake of the Weinstein scandal. In October, Cameron Russell posted the anonymous and harrowing experiences of fellow models on her Instagram page, highlighting just how prolific the problem had become. “We do not operate in an atmosphere of us and them, or fear,” emphasises Doukas, conscious that agents have been criticised for ignoring models who have suffered at the hands of particular photographers but adamant that every model on her books has access to her number and can call her any time. “If they feel comfortable enough to open up to you and tell you their issues and problems then it means that if they find themselves on a shoot and, God forbid, they feel in any way compromised they will ring you.”
It is fear, she believes, which means many won’t make a complaint. “Everyone knows everyone in fashion so the minute some poor person has some situation where they’ve been compromised or hit upon, they don’t want to say anything because it’s their career. They ask why people didn’t speak out, it’s because they’re terrified. “I’d always support the model. I’m not holier than thou, but seriously I have three daughters, I’d go bloody mad if anything happened to one of them.”
“There are certain standards, like having separate changing areas, which need to be reviewed,” adds Simon, a call that will hopefully be answered by the British Fashion Council’s new Model First Initiative, which is being spearheaded by the British Fashion Model Agency Association of which Storm is a founding member. The tale of Doukas spotting a young Kate Moss at New York’s JFK airport and making her into a modelling phenomenon is the stuff of fashion legend. Moss and Doukas worked together for more than 28 years, through the supermodel’s rise, the 2005 crisis when she was photographed by the allegedly taking cocaine, prompting Burberry, Chanel and H&M to sever contracts worth $4 million, and then a precisely strategised comeback. Moss eventually left Storm to begin her own agency in 2016. “I’m really cool about these things, I told her to go for it,” she shrugs, seeming genuinely cool. After all, she has a whole new generation to make into icons.