Whether it is fashion, lifestyle and media, models are very talented individual professionals and are an essential part of the industry. Whether it is for marketing, sales and promotion of products and/or services or advertisements, commercials or events, models play a critical role as brand and corporate ambassadors.
In many cases, as independent and autonomous contractors, models have inherent rights and privileges which must be ethically, financially and legally protected and codified in order to ensure models, as human beings, are treated in an utmost professional and ethical manner by all parties involved in the fashion, lifestyle and media industry.
Models, as independent contractors, must be fully empowered and enabled with complete protection(s) under federal, state and local laws via binding contracts and agreements executed by the respective parties involved in any modelling role, assignment or engagement.
Just like any professional independent contractor, models’ rights, privileges, warranties, roles, responsibilities and related terms and conditions must always be properly documented and memorialized in services’ agreements in a highly transparent manner. Further, these contracts and agreements must clearly articulate explicit terms and conditions including, but not limited to, financial and legal remedies on behalf of the models which will enable them with recourse in case of any violation of the contracts and agreements.
It is mission critical for the entire fashion, lifestyle and media industry to proactively embrace, undertake and implement definitive measures to enable models to fully realize their professional potential while they also tangibly benefit from properly executed binding contracts and agreements between all parties involved.