Elite founder John Casablancas dies at 70

By

Matthieu Guinebault

Published
Jul 22, 2013

Cindy Crawford, Iman, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bündchen… All supermodels whose careers were shaped by John Casablancas, founder of Elite Model Management, who sadly passed away at the age of 70 after suffering from cancer.

Elite Model Management was founded in Paris in 1972 but it was not until the early nineties that the company really took off. Casablancas was largely responsible for glamourizing the modeling industry and making household names out of models, sending them to T.V shows, fitness shoots, fashion magazines and music videos.

Despite the hype he managed to create around his models, Casablancas faced many scandals in his time from an affair with Stephanie Seymour to a scathing documentary by the BBC in 1999 on his method used at the agency.

He leave behind him one of the most well-known modeling agencies in the world, present in 60 countries,with more than 35,000 models on its books.