INTRODUCING LAUREN MAGUIRE
Back in late April, Nicole got the chance to hop on the phone with the Manchester native and all around lovely human being, Lauren Maguire (she/her)!
Introduced to GIRL GANG by longtime community member Sabah Shams (they/them), I was immediately intrigued by Lauren’s story, as personally I am not particularly versed with the business side of the fashion word… or any part of the fashion world for that matter! Lauren is a prime example of someone who has taken the phrase, “if you want something done right, you have got to do it yourself” to heart. Lauren’s career within the modeling and fashion industry expands from Europe to New York City having experience at both boutique and also larger scale agencies. She has come to understand the important aspects within each landscape and the differing values that they offer in the opportunities they both provide to models looking for work. However, like all industries, it isn’t always the talent (the models) whose best interests are at the heart of the decisions being made. No longer wanting to take part in a work culture where people get turned into fixtures for business, Lauren decided to be the change instead. I’ll toss another cheesy phase at you, “sometimes you gotta just burn it all down!” Well, Lauren isn’t lighting anything on fire per-say, but she HAS started her very own company representing models as a Mother Agent. Sometimes you just gotta do it yourself, right?
Without further a-do, I would like to introduce LAUREN MAGUIRE & Another Model Management!
NK: Lauren! I want to start from the very beginning. I want to start from your backstory. Give us some details. Where are you from? Where'd you grow up? What impacted you to be interested in the modeling/fashion/entertainment industry?
LAUREN MAGUIRE | ANOTHER MODEL MGMT
LM: I was born in Manchester, England in a little town near the airport. I'm from a very working class family. My dad's job when I was younger was to print fake designer clothes and sell them. He always had fun designers, and me and my brother would help him print everything. It was just all fake… it wasn't exactly the best job for him to have but that's how we were introduced to these brands and knew how to identify them. In England, when you go to school, you don't wear your own clothes, you wear a uniform type thing but you would have certain days where you come in, in your own clothes. So me and my brother would come in these fake designer clothes. As if, no one knew they were fake. All of this put designers on the map for me and my brother. When my brother was younger, we'd play with dolls, and he would design clothes for my dolls. He was so into fashion. Then when we would go to the shop or the mall or whatever, I would see these models on the beauty counters and I would think, “Oh my god. This is so beautiful. Oh my god.” I was just obsessed. I started looking into it, getting to know their names, learning about who they were and their stories. I just really started to love the modeling industry. I did really like Victoria's Secret, which I know has issues today, but back then when you're so young and looking up to these supermodels and hearing all of their stories, I was just in love.
NK: No, no shame! I feel like it used to be more of an event. I remember we talked about it at school and we'd be like, “The fashion show is this week, which house are we watching it at? Are we getting pizza?” It was a whole event!
LM: Yeah. It was crazy. I loved it.
NK: A lot of criticism now and a lot of things we didn't recognize then.
LM: Yeah, yeah, I wasn't aware of all that stuff when I was younger. I just really loved all these really beautiful women looking really great.
NK: And wearing all these amazing things - oh my god, and the performers… Continue, sorry.
**we both laugh**
LM: That's how I got into it really. I think because I was on the internet looking at these models, I somehow gravitated towards these different people that were up and coming models. I would always look at them, and based on the past people that had become famous before, I would predict who I thought would be big, who would get famous and be a successful model. A lot of the time I was right about it. I was like, “oh, they got big” and didn't think much of it. But then my parents made me realize that there's actually a job in this and it's a career that can pay well if you get into it. Because my parents were always saying, “when you're older you're gonna get rich and buy me a Bentley. You’ll buy me a new house and look after us” and all this stuff. My goal was that I need this great job, something that I love, that would make money and help me look after my parents. Then I just kind of knew that I wanted to be an agent. I kept looking at the modeling industry, keeping an eye on fashion, and then went to university. I did fashion promotion, which didn’t have anything to do with modeling or the fashion news. Actually it was more like advertising and I hated it, but I still did it. When I was in uni, there was a year where you could work in the industry. I worked at a modeling agency near my house that I'd always wanted to work for. It's a pretty big agency. They were well known. I interned for them for a year, and then went back to uni for another year. Then when I finished university, I went to work for them as the receptionist. And then that's where I got started.
NK: Okay, so okay, I want to go back to a few things that you mentioned. You're looking at all of these models and you are making these predictions. What was it that drew you into the people that you were right about? Was it something that they were giving off in the photos that they were taking? Was it their stories? Was it the brands that they were working with? What do you think led you to have those feelings?
LM: They all just had something that made them a little bit different. At that time, they still fit into the “traditional beauty standard.” Back then, I mean you watched the shows, you know how the models were. If they looked like those models but then had a little bit of something different about them, then that would get them more attention. I just kind of noticed it. I don't know how to explain it. It was just an intuition type thing, I think. Because I'd seen so many different models going on different websites of agencies and seeing their boards, I guess I knew what to look for without realizing it. I'd see the models and think “She's great. She's going to do well”, and then when she would start working for the bigger brands. I’d think “well, there you go. It's going to start now.”
NK: Before university, you mentioned that you knew that you wanted to be an agent, you were looking at agency sites. How did you come across that breakdown of the industry? Especially going into a fashion program that's all about advertising, there's obviously so many different corners of the industry. I'm coming at this question from a music business kind of mindset where our industry is broken down into the record labels that take care of all of the big budgeting, and then you have the managers who do the day to day, and the agents who represent you on the deals and opportunities and the bigger scale stuff. You know, there's all these different sides. What does a modeling agent technically take care of? And what are the exterior sides of the fashion and modeling industry?
LM: The agent is basically in charge of the models career, their development, what jobs that they book, so they would find the clients, send these models out to try and book these models different gigs. They also negotiate the rates the model would get. Say a job is $2000, you'd say your model would do it for three or four, and go from there - that type of stuff. You also sometimes work as a therapist. If the model is having a bad day or something went wrong on set, you are the person to talk to them about it, and then you talk to whoever's on set about it. You are the one who sorts things out. Mostly for agencies, it is looking after the models, getting them jobs, helping them develop their careers, and learn about the industry. You are their go-to person. Then you have the casting directors on another side of it, they're the ones that decide who gets the job out of the models. The agent will send the models to the casting directors, and the casting directors go “Oh, we want this person”. The models get put on a shortlist and get “optioned”, which is what we call it when then the client and the casting director choose which model they want. There are also the photographers, stylists, all of that. If they're doing shoots, they can request a specific model. However, a Mother Agent is what I am hoping to be.
NK: Is there a difference between a Mother Agent and a normal agent?
LM: As an example, I would find and sign a model. I would help them with digitals and get their portfolios together. I would then try and place them with an agency somewhere, probably near where they live so it's easier for them to come in and out of the office at first. I'll place them there and then that agency is in charge of booking them jobs. However, if the agency wants to change anything with the model, if they want the model to have a different hairstyle or if they want to book a job for them that maybe I personally don't agree with, as the Mother Agent, I have the final say on that. The agency also has to pay me 10% of what they booked for the model.
NK: Okay, okay, I'm seeing the bigger picture. I feel like it's like a blend of what in the music industry is an agent and a manager. You do the day to day and you are the shoulder to cry on. You are also Mama Bear, and will make sure that the model is safe and everything goes well during negotiations on the ground.
Let’s go back in time. You're working as a receptionist at your first agency job. You're obviously seeing a lot of people coming in and out of rooms. You're learning. What do you think the biggest thing that you took away from working in that position was? I guess that kind of leads to like, from watching on the sidelines, what do you think your biggest criticism is of the industry today and why do you want to be that force of change by starting your own mother agency?
LM: Working as a receptionist, I learned to always be nice to the receptionist! *laughs* Receptionists have more power than you think or more of a say than you think with what goes on in the agency they work for… A lot of people are just mean to receptionists, and it's so annoying. Some people think that [receptionists] are “below” them and they don’t realize that if you are mean to that receptionist, they can very well turn around and say “yeah, so and so sucks” to the agency and then you may no longer get the job or get signed with the client. The company may not work with you again. But then working in the agency and seeing everything but not being an agent yet, I realized a lot of the time, models didn’t really get the attention that I think they deserved, especially in a bigger agency. That bothered me a bit. I went to work for a boutique agency after that experience, which was much smaller. I could speak to more people who worked there and I had more of a say in what the agency did, stuff like that.
LM: My biggest critique of the industry as a whole I think is when agencies pretend that they have people's best interests at heart and they don't or they preach these things about being different and being a change… it's always a lot of talk but behind the scenes, they're not actually doing that, which sucks. A lot of people are misguided, they might think they are signed to this agency that's so progressive and is looking out for all these different people but it turns out that they're just the same as every other agency. That made me really annoyed. Because I'm just like, “well, what am I even doing this for? What was the point?”
NK: Yeah, and I think I mentioned last time I keep having conversations with all these different people in different industries who are asking themselves like, why can't we just do what we say we want to do? Like, why can't we just be transparent? Ugh… coming off of that, being an agent, like, what does it take to actually qualify and to be legitimate in the industry? I know for the music industry there is sometimes no formal training for certain positions, you kind of have to just do.
LM: Well, you can’t go to university for it. There's no test that you can take. I'd say start off as an intern at an agency, or even go for a receptionist position, something like that. Go and get to know the agents and the people there, get the contacts, and then have that experience under your belt because they all care about experience. But I know sometimes the situation is you’ll only get a job if you have experience, so how are you supposed to get experience if they won't give you a job without it, you know? You've got to kind of start at the bottom, and then work your way up. So like, you'd be the receptionist. And then from there, you'd be a Junior Booker, which is kind of like an assistant to an Agent, and they would teach you the ropes. And then from there, you would like to work your way up to an Agent, and then maybe like a Senior Agent, and just keep going up from there. But anyone that wants to live in America from another country, I would say get a master's degree, because it would help so much with the visa, the H1 visa specifically, because if you don't have a master's degree, then you’re like, at the bottom of the list.
NK: That's good to know. Because we do have a lot of people in our community who aren’t in the US and there’s so much that goes into getting a visa anywhere. I want to talk about your connections in New York but getting your career started in England - what has your experience been like learning the two landscapes? Are there true differences between them? What's valuable about your perspective, having both of those, very dramatic, high-fashion scenes that are also very competitive on your belt? And why New York? Why is this the place to be?
LM: Fashion is a very international industry. If I have contacts in England, and then some in New York, some in LA, and some in Milan, that hopefully puts me in a better position to be more successful and help the models be more successful. Being in England with an agency, you have a lot more connections to other European agencies because everything's so close. It's very common for a model to fly to somewhere like Spain, or Italy, or whatever for a quick gig because everything's so close and the flights are so cheap. Whereas in America, if you're gonna be flown out to Milan, then you're probably going to be paid a lot of money. But it's not the same really for European models. They just kind of fly everywhere and don't get as much in terms of payment. I think London is very, very high fashion. It's very edgy and everyone's really sharp, if that makes sense. And they do have the same as that in New York, where I think New York also has a commercial side to it as well. I think with New York, you can kind of do more there. There's a higher variety of jobs, you can do the high fashion editorial Vogue stuff and then you can also do the Nike stuff or “Nike” (emphasizing the “e”) I guess as Americans say. **laughs** So yeah, there's just more options in New York for models.
NK: Totally - Your network is valuable because you're pulling unique and up and coming talent from these different fashion landscapes and you want to expose them to the opportunities that they deserve. New York is the place to do it. To have that versatility in spaces to be successful in but also allowing your talent to not be pigeonholed, it is exciting. I guess I'll ask this question because it's relevant right now. The Met Gala happened last weekend. It's obviously an iconic event that brings actors, actresses, models, and just famous people in general together with the fashion industry. And it gained a lot of criticism this year. As we know there's the whole movement at this point of body positivity and also transparency in what it takes to be at the top of your industry. I want to talk about Kim K and the Marilyn dress. Does being at the top of your industry mean having the ability to lose 15 pounds in two weeks to fit into a dress and is that something that we celebrate? Or, you know, like, where's the line there? Do you have any thoughts about the tone that this sets for consumers and for models as you are coming into your own agent position?
Models: Nat Renelle & Kristian Buhl
NIKE
LM: I think if she wants to do it, then it’s her choice, but I think she needs to realize that she's still in the public eye. A lot of people look up to her, she is idolized. But we also all know that she has access to a team. She has a nutritionist, she has a gym, she can go to professionals to help her do this in a healthy way. No one else really has that. The true worry is if people are going to see her do this and try to do the same thing without the access to the same resources… It's probably hard for her, she's only one person and I know she's in the limelight. But I also think there needs to be a disclaimer included in the conversation of “hey, I had all these people help me. Please don't do this if you aren’t able to do this in a healthy way.”
PUMA x NINTENDO
NK: What has the process been like getting your agency off the ground? You had kind of mentioned to me that you were in a group chat with some of your models talking about names for the agency. What goes into the process of getting it together and getting the confidence to launch your own thing?
LM: Well, the reason I decided to start my own thing was that I was really frustrated with the industry. I had a pretty bad experience with the last agency that I worked for. I felt like I was trying my best to be there for the models and put forward all these ideas to try different things, but because I wasn't in the position of power, I never had the final say.
Model: Nat Renelle
STEVE MADDEN
A lot of things that I wanted to happen just wouldn't because it wasn't my agency. I'd have to talk to models on the side and apologize for things that my boss would do, which really got annoying. I just kept thinking that I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be doing damage control for people that don't deserve it, people that treat me like shit and also treat the models like shit. I shouldn't have to do that. I love the models. I felt like I was a person who they would go to for everything and I wasn't getting credit for the work I was putting in. Plus I wasn't getting the results I wanted in terms of what I believed the models needed. I also didn't have access to any accounts. What I mean by that is if a model wasn’t getting paid on time (or paid, period) for a job they had done, I had no way of helping. It was frustrating having no control over anything. After I left the agency, a lot of the models were like, “why don't you just start your own thing?” And at first, I was like, no way. But after a while, I was like, okay, whatever, let's just do it. Let's try it. I made sure they all knew that this was new to me as well, so like please don't expect anything crazy from me. We're in this together. But if they want to take a chance on me, then I would love to work with them. So yeah, I just started it. And it seems to be going well. I do have days where my self confidence is really just down because it's so new, and the early stages of anything aren’t always the best. I am always asking myself,
“can I do this? Like, is this even worth it? Will this work? Will it be successful?” That’s the hard part of it. The hardest part is you just getting over yourself and being like, just do it and it will succeed if you try.
NK: It's so scary, putting your all into something because it's vulnerable. Something that Hashika and I always talk about with GIRL GANG is that no day is the same. We have no idea what to expect. Like we think we do, but we don't. And we're always learning, we always learn something new. Whether it's from a mistake we might have made, or learning from an experience that we have with somebody, we're always learning.
LM: I don’t know if you guys felt this when you started but did you ever feel like if you weren't incredibly successful within the first week, you feel like, “Oh, well, I guess I failed.”
NK: Like “ugh, why am I doing this in the first place?!” Absolutely. I think sometimes the scariest thing is hearing positive feedback. Like when we started this space, we would reach out to people about GIRL GANG and if people replied saying “that sounds like a great idea, I want to be involved” we’d be like, “...you do? Are you sure?” It is really scary for us to have people still be interested in joining this space. I think when you have an idea, trust it. Trust your gut, your gut is always right. Don't do things that your gut says no to, just don't. That's also something Hashka and I learned. If one of us feels weird about something, it will go wrong or it just won't be as successful as it could have been.
LM: Because you know what's good for you.
NK: Exactly. You've got enough experience to guide you to what opportunity is going to be good and what opportunity is going to be right, so trust yourself. I know it's only been a few weeks as a Mother Agent but yeah, we will talk in two years and it'll be like a whole different conversation. I am excited.
LM: Oh my god, like the Billie Eilish interviews
**we both laugh**
NK: For any model in the future that you bring on or that you work with, what is the number one thing that you want them to know about you as an agent and the experience working with your company, Another Model Management?
LM: The number one thing is that we are a team. I want them to know that we're going to work together and I'm not going to be making all these decisions on my own about their life and their career. I think it's really important for agents and models to actually sit and talk through decisions together and figure out what the models actually want, because this is their life. And if they aren't happy with something, then I don't want to be forcing him to do something they don't want to do. I want to make decisions that are right for them. I want to be able to talk and just be transparent with each other. I want to learn about what we both like and don't like, and just go from there. Just try and make it like a good partnership. And then hopefully that will bring success for them. Because, I don't know, it's always nice when you're working with someone and they feel like they can talk to you about anything. Like if they have an issue with something, I never want anyone to be scared to bring it up to me. I think in the last agency I worked for, a lot of the models wouldn't speak up about what bothered them. They were too scared to tell their agents. And I just thought that was wrong. Women should be helping each other. I also want them to know that I am there to look out for them. That's what I want to do. Like if I place them in with an agency and that agency starts to act out or tries to mess them around in some kind of way, well they signed a contract where I get the last say, so I will step up and get them to justice.
NK: Ultimately, you've got their back. You want transparency, you want teamwork, and you want them to know that you're always going to be on their side. I think that's really important. For any agency or client that comes to you that is looking to work with you or your models, what do you want them to know about working with you? What will the experience be like and what should they expect from the talent on your roster?
LM: To the clients? I'm really nice! I am really nice and friendly!
**we both laugh**
NK: I would attest to that! I would say that's true!
LM: I guess I would say that I work literally all day every day. I'm gonna work hard. If anyone wants to work with me, I will do everything to the best of my ability, try to get everything done on time, and do everything the right way. Overall, I just like to be very honest, for everyone’s sake. A lot of people love to walk on eggshells or like, beat around the bush. I say what I mean and would like to have them do the same for me so we know we're on the same page. Plus transparency so no one feels afraid to bring up any questions or concerns. I'm all about open and honest communication between everyone.
NK: Huge! Okay, last question. Do you have any goals for 2022? What's next for you and Another Model Management!
LM: I would like to be in New York.
NK: Interesting. That sounds good.
**we both laugh**
LM: I want to live there and actually work with the models that have signed there. And to see them? That would be really good because everything feels all over the place. I would love for my agency to grow. I would love to have enough money to make a website. I'm really excited for when the first model books that first job with an agency and we can celebrate that. And also, just like, excited to actually start making the industry a safer place for models and a better place for them. Where modeling can be an actual job and people have actual protection with their wages. Where people can have more autonomy over, well, themselves. I know that a lot of models are sometimes not even seen as people and that leads them to be mistreated by different people. If I can start making a change in that area with actual results, that'd be really really great.
LAUREN’S LINKS
Lauren’s Instagram - @lrnmag
Another Model Mgmt - @anothermodelmgmt
Email for Inquiries: anothermodelmgmt@gmail.com
Shön Magazine Interview - Meet Lauren Maguire
