The Model Alliance Survey finds that 30% of models have been sexually harassed and 50% exposed to cocaine

Shocking results from The Model Alliance.

An extract from the Founder of The Model Alliance- Sara Ziff’s introductory article.

“For too long, there has been a myopic disregard for the modeling industry’s systemic abuses of its workforce. While I have been very fortunate in my modeling career, I have also seen firsthand how the industry often disregards child labor law, lacks financial transparency, encourages eating disorders, and blindly tolerates sexual abuse in the workplace. The lucrative careers of high-profile supermodels misrepresent the reality for most working models, who are young, mostly female, and uniquely vulnerable.”

This pressure, combined with financial dependency and an unsafe work environment, can be a lethal combination. 18-year-old Uruguayan model Eliana Ramos died of anorexia just six months after her model sister Luisel Ramos, 22, suffered a heart attack after stepping off a runway. In 2009, 20-year-old Korean supermodel Daul Kim, who walked in runway shows for the likes of Chanel, hanged herself in her Paris apartment just weeks after writing a blog entry that she was “mad depressed and overworked.” Last year, one day before Milan Fashion Week, 22-year-old French model Tom Nicon threw himself to his death from his Milan apartment, as did 26-year old Canadian model Hayley Kohle, and 20-year-old Russian Vogue cover girl Ruslana Korshunova, who leapt from her ninth-floor apartment in New York’s Financial District. Lucy Gordon, formerly the face of Cover Girl, hanged herself in her Paris apartment, and 24-year-old American male model Ambrose Olsen, whose work included campaigns for Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton, hanged himself in New York. This tragic slew of deaths cannot be blamed on the industry alone, but suggest that models deserve healthier standards and need more support.