Recruitment of models on Instagram

As the fashion show season is in full swing, the modeling agencies are turning more and more to social networks, Instagram in particular, to recruit the top models of tomorrow. Not so long ago, it was by strolling the streets, cafes, concert halls and other trendy places that agency "scouts" unearthed, among thousands of anonymous people, the future stars of fashion.

But the agencies do not have a monopoly on the process, and the American fashion giant Marc Jacobs himself organized a recruitment campaign on Instagram for his spring-summer 2015 collection. Nadia Rahmat, from Singapore, who won it. "I don't think I could have benefited from such an opportunity without social media," she told AFP, saying the internet had "smashed the barriers of communication." The agencies also encourage their models to make a presence on social networks, including by revealing aspects of their personality, to boost their image, explains Nadia Rahmat. These changes, "revolutionary" according to her, however, raise fears about the influence they could have on adolescents.

"With Instagram, you don't have to wait to be discovered in your shopping center or at an airport," says IMG, one of the industry leaders, on its website.

The agency launched on Instagram the campaign "We Love Your Genes", inviting aspiring models to post their photos, which allowed, says IMG, to "sign girls from all over the world." ".

For its vice-president David Cunningham, social networks have "completely changed" the economic model of the sector by considerably simplifying the recruitment process, while removing some of the stress of the castings which weighed on the contenders for modeling.

- Elisa