Campsite Media.

So now that we've heard from Jennifer Jimenez, let's get back into our story.

Jennifer was traumatized by modeling by getting to the top, and Paul, well, Paul was set on getting to the top, but he was still in the throes of dealing with his horrible relationship with his dad, who he says was violent to him at times when he was growing up.

We haven't talked much about that, but Paul's.

Tendency to be a brawler seems like it was directly connected to his dad's negative attitude.

Here's Paul's mom, Monica.

He had a very very bad temper and Paul would stand up to him and it just made it worse.

They would just yell and scream and eventually Paul would shut up and just burn inside and mel would just carry on like her Luna particular, the Navis could hear.

Just horrible.

So Paul's a fighter, but he can cross the line, like when he was a macho idiot getting fired from East West for punching someone in the face and nightclub, I mean remember that.

And on the flip side of.

That, you also heard Jennifer express her appreciation for Paul's protective attitude.

She felt like she needed someone like that in her corner.

To create somebody into a star, you actually have to love them.

My girlfriends would come into me as I was sleeping, and I would actually wear I would take polaroids of my models and I would tape them to my forehead.

And my girlfriends would come in and they'd go, why do you have the picture of that girl taped to your forehead?

I said, because I have to see it.

I have to visually see them walking down the runway for Valentino.

I just visually see them working for ARMANI actually have to visually see them doing Victoria's secrets.

I have to.

If I put it into my brain and I actually see it, I can actually materialize it manifested.

But then one day out of the blue, Paul gets a phone call from Jennifer's mom.

Jennifer and I just had a wonderful, wonderful meeting with mister John Casablancas.

Sorry, Paul, So she walks out.

I'm crying my eyes on it, and I'm an emotional, passionate guy.

I cry a lot.

Paul now has zero models and is effectively unemployed, but he manages to make another phone call during this period of morning to John Casablancas himself.

I said, so, mister Casablancis, I love this child.

Take her from me.

I'll take five of yours, and I won't take little kids.

I'll take five fucking stars.

Soon Paul would make good on his threat.

He would actually get those five models and more.

And while Paul declaring a model war against Casablancas and the elite agency all by himself, it seems a little silly, you should still remember that this guy who is fond of calling others freaking maniacs is for sure the biggest freaking maniac of all.

From iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.

But I'm Vanessa Grigoriatis and this is Model Dworks, Episode seven.

So Paul could be a character in a country song that only Larry Lynde could write.

His only model has left him.

His best friend, Omar has kicked him to the curb.

He's not come with him to this new agency.

It's a sad, sad song.

But then Paul's luck starts to turn around.

Omar decides to leave the men's division he's building at East West and instead do the same thing for it models.

Paul's new We had one telephone, no call waiting, and within six months we were crushing it.

It was like a tornado came to La.

Omar's not exaggerating.

We were married, you know, and we were married.

I was like a marriage, him and I.

It's an unorthodox marriage.

I don't know how many nights Pauline would wake me up at two in the morning, three New Morning show me a polaroid was slight like this fucking place too.

I mean, he was so intense.

It's true.

Paul is nothing if not intense, and after Jennifer Jimenez left the agency, he was even more determined to find his next big star.

He just didn't think that she might come looking for him.

But one day, out of the blue, Paul says, he gets a message that says, Hi.

I've never really gotten any jobs or anything, but I know I could be a supermodel.

And I heard you take girls in LA and put them on the covers of New York magazines.

I'm like, yeah, thank you very much, have a nice day.

This model and Paul have different recollections of what happened from here, but according to Paul, she decides to stop in and meet him.

Anyway, I get a knock on my door.

I opened the door.

Yeah, gotta be fucking kidding me.

Ohly, shit, who are you?

Come on in here?

Come into my studio apartment.

Stand up against that wall.

I took three polaroids over.

I said, now go home.

I'll call you in a couple of hours.

I sent those polaroids to Preston Westenberg, the editor of Vogue.

I sent those same polaroids to Paul Marciano at Guests, and then I would sit there and I stared at my phone, and then I got a phone call from Preston Westenberg and she said this to me, Hey, Paul, how you doing.

You know you have a star?

What?

Oh yeah, We're going to make her into the biggest star in the world.

Paul.

Okay.

Then the phone rings again two minutes later, Hey, Paul, this is Paul Marciano.

We have a big shooting coming up with Guests with a very wonderful photographer.

Her name is Ellen von Unworth.

And it's five days, a couple thousand dollars day.

Doesn't pay a lot, but she'll be the new face of Guests.

I'm in, I'm in.

Overnight she becomes the biggest freaking star in the world.

She starts doing Vogue, she starts doing Guests.

Now Paul is in possession of another supermodel, and supermodels are, after all the coin of the realm.

In the late eighties and early nineties, I mean, modeling is just getting hotter and hotter.

The girls are going up and up.

It's almost like the crypto of its day.

Even the phrase supermodel has been around for a while, but now you can't pick up a newspaper without reading it.

Models that were known for being hangers, like close hangers or just for one specific look are now celebrities in their own right, their status symbols and icons, and they get interviewed themselves.

People want to talk to them.

They're allowed to talk.

There was a time because of the concept of supply and demand.

Small supply of girls on the covers of magazines creates a huge demand for those models.

Small supply of girls on the editorial pages of the magazines creates a huge demand for those models.

Out of the two hundred and forty four pages of Vogue every single year, there's only about eighteen girls that control those two hundred and forty four pages.

Those eighteen girls control everything.

They have all the power.

I don't have the power.

They have more power than the photographers, they have more power than the designers.

I mean, there was a time, the day of the supermodel, where whether it's Christy Turlington, Lindy Evangelista, Kate Moss, Sidney Crawford, they controlled everything, They decided everything, everything, you could say.

The supermodel craze came to its apex in nineteen ninety with George Michael's music video for his song Freedom.

In this video, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and some others are trapesing around these gorgeously lit apartments and their lips syncing to the song.

This is pop culture's full throated endorsement of the moment of the supermodel, and Paul is there to catch the wave.

So it's the early nineteen nineties and supermodels rule the world, and little old Paul is right there alongside them.

Here's a roundup of some of the.

Interviews of supermodels, and they are not all necessarily from this exact moment, but I think they're sort of fun to listen to.

Let's start with Paulina Porsakova.

She's done very well for herself, having married rock star rick O.

Kaseik of the Car.

Next up Linda Evangelista.

But it's not just her good looks.

They keep her on top.

I will card I try and be professional.

I'm never late, never missed a plane, never sick, never unhappy, never hate the clothes.

That ways, I like them.

She's a professional.

Be gentle and the youngest supermodel, Tyra Banks, after.

Her mother took her pictures to several agencies.

She was very active in my career and she comes here out of the babysit, but just does moral support because it gets kind of hard, you know, being new and all these supermodels there and you don't really feel accepted, and so she's there.

You know, if they don't want to talk to me, like fine, I'll go.

To my mommy.

In his career, as I said before, Paul did manage to make good on the threat that he said he gave to Casablancas he poached away stars from him and from other agencies too.

Naomi came over, and Stephanie came over, Deephanie ceo which he came over, and Gail Elliott came over, Carl Young came over.

Now my ego is bigger than Texas.

I think I'm God.

Literally everyone is kissing my ass.

I'm in rooms with the richest men in the country, most powerful people in the entertainment industry, kissing my ass.

And I would look at them all and say to them all, you may have a billion dollars, but I ain't paying for this restaurant meal.

You people are somebody else's.

Because I walked in here with ten of the most beautiful models in the world.

You think you got power, I'm fucking Paul Fisher.

My ego is monstrous.

I'm an animal with a temper and a weekend fucking warrior and an ego bigger than you could ever imagine.

And Kara was like the go to girl for some reason of all the famous models at that time.

Covers of American Vogue, multiple covers of American Vogue, and you know, huge revelon campaigns and things like that.

Everybody loved Kara Young.

She was best friends with Linda and Cindy and Christy and Kate.

And we actually talked to Kara about her life in this time.

Kara Young is from San Francisco and she's biracial.

My father, when I started modeling, was very upset and said, you know, I think for you to pursue a career that people's opinions of your face and figure determine whether you are financially successful.

It's not something of yours, someone of your intellects to do.

But I also didn't care what he thought.

I didn't care what my parents thought of moving away or you know, pursuing modeling.

It never I didn't ask them like I would meet someone in Milan, they go, what does your mom and dad think of?

I go, I don't didn't ask my mom and dad what they thought.

I don't care.

And so I did end up going to New York and I was represented by Paul Paul represented myself Stephanie Carree.

Paula Barbieri.

Paula Barbieri was a big model back then.

She had curly brown hair and a rocking bod.

She dated lots of celebrities.

I mean all the rock stars and actors and sports stars wanted a model on their arms.

But she is most famous for dating OJ Simpson.

And that is because right before O.

J.

Simpson murdered Nicole, which I think we can say now that that actually happened, she broke up with them, which could be a motivation in part for the murder.

And so it was I say her because she's relevant, and she did.

She gets a different rap, but she did actually work quite a bit.

Paul catered to all of these women and he made the other agencies furious.

They could not believe that Paul Fisher was starting to win this new model war.

Believe me, Johnny and Joey and Eileen were not happy with Omar and Pollie at all.

They were not happy.

But he and Omar were fresh, they were new.

The supermodels liked them.

They were downtown and Pollie was just a different kind of energy.

He brought a different kind of vibe to him and Omar were they were superstars themselves, you know, they definitely were.

And they conquered La and New York simultaneously, which is, you know, was not an easy thing to do.

And sometimes people were represented by Paul, they wouldn't even have a European agent, you know, they would just give up their European agents that he would deal with that.

So when you met Paul, like, would you consider that as the height of your career?

Yes?

Absolutely absolutely, And where had you been before?

So?

I was with.

I was with Wilhelmina, and then I was with Elite and next and then Paulie.

Because there was so much, there was such a disturbance about it.

I just decided to go with Paulie because I had friends that were very happy with him.

Part of why she switched to paul was a terrible experience with a notorious French model agent.

I went to party at my agent, Jean Luke's house, who hung himself in Athenegalese jail cell because he became a Jeffrey Epstein guy.

And this is how I ended up going with Pauli and leaving Jean Luke.

There's all these creepers there, and I was like twenty years old.

I remember I saw all these creepy guys there, and.

I and wrong.

I said, Joe Luke, I'm not here to fuck your friends.

And he said, oh, that's not what it's happening.

Oh my god, you're so defensive.

And I said, really, that's what it looks.

Like to me.

I said, don't offer me to anybody, because they'll be sorely disappointed.

Because I came to Paris, I was not a virgin.

I had already had a boyfriend, I'd already had in my life.

I'd already experienced, you know, sexual harassment in the workplace.

But now that was all behind her.

And in New York, Kara is also part of the same social scene as Paul.

You know, everybody went out, everybody went to the same places and just meandered around the city from one spot, from MK to coffee shop to Bowerie bar.

Everybody just you know, moved around.

So Cafe to Back was the most famous place on the planet, and it was a tiny hovel of a place.

And my husband now says, I met you.

I met you at Cafe to Back.

You were playing pool with Stephanie and Nailmi And I was like, really, because yes I did, because.

You were wearing overall second, I was so all dressed up.

For the night.

That's Kara's new husband, but her husband at the time, Sante Drazzio, is a huge photographer and the two of them lived in a crazy soho loft that some people dubbed Plato's retreat.

You would go by and would be Kate Moss or Julian Schnabel, everybody just drinking champagne, smoking cigarettes.

I was the famous agent.

Sante was the most famous photographer It was freaking amazing.

And then you see Robert de Naro over there because he's dating Naomi, or Mike Tyson because he's dating Naomi, or you know, you just see a heavyweight.

You know, Bono was there.

The shit was like I mean, it was, it was intent.

He was a very dear friend of my ex Sante Derazzio.

They were really really close.

Paul was a big part of our relationship and.

He represented a lot of friends, and he was a different kind of an agent.

You know, he was fun, he.

Was young and everybody was old school, like Johnny Costa Blanca.

Paully was someone that we actually hung out.

I never hung out with them.

Paul he changed everything like he did.

He would do a comp card.

He did a comp card of Stephanie Seymour and a comp card of Caryotis.

He did comp Pard when he started representing Stephanie.

That just had her picture.

It didn't have her name, it didn't have anything else.

It just said it and then a tiny phone.

Number, like so you had to search that out to find her and find him.

But his point was he never said this to me, but I guesstimated that he was just saying this is it?

You know, this is it?

She's it, I'm it find us.

She finally Paul was really it, even lands one of the biggest supermodels of all, Naomi Campbell.

Paul isn't just operating in the world of models anymore.

He's operating in the world of major celebrities.

And mixing Paul Fisher and celebrities is mixing two very volatile substances.

So it's the nineties and Paul is going out with his famous clients a lot because he's Paul and that's how he relates to people, but also because it's important for business.

We needed to bond with our models, and the way you bonded with your models were like going to dinner, going out this way, they felt close to their booker and they weren't looking to jump to another agency.

He's booking clients at the highest level he was.

He always wanted more.

He wanted more for people than they wanted for, more than they wanted for themselves.

Like he wanted us all to do films, and he wanted us all to.

Go hard, you know, and you know he had that.

He had a more aggressive nature for the women he represented than possibly we had for ourselves.

Paul supported some of his models emotionally.

He would fly places to try to talk to them during difficult shoots.

I'm not that nady of a person emotionally or but Poullie I had friends that were extremely fragile, and he if a girl was having.

A meltdown, he would be like, I'm going to go on this job with you.

You know, I'm going to go to Malta with you.

I'm going to go to Brazil with you.

I'm going to help you through this.

I didn't need that he'd always offered to me, and I was like, I'm good.

I'm not one of them.

I'm good.

For Kara, she felt not only like she didn't need this, but she just wanted to have a chill life.

I'm not aggressive, and I regret that.

I mean I would.

I'd be like working with Naomi and she'd go, when am I going to be a cover?

When am I going to get a cover?

When am I going to do this?

And I just didn't have that kind of I wasn't assertive like that, and I admire that in people.

It's just not my nature.

When I was on the cover of Vogue the first second third, you know, I was very very happy.

It changed my life.

It changed my financial status for the rest of my life.

It changed my relevance as models, So obviously I was really really happy about that.

I wasn't aggressive about getting.

There, though aggressive Paul could do.

He could be the aggressive one for his models.

But things started to shift, and as in any business that lives and dies off of relationships and trends, some of his models, over the course of time hit snacks, like Paula Barbieri wasn't getting as much work anymore now that the whole OJ thing was blowing up and he was on trial for murder.

She was in love with Dolph Lugren.

She once went out with Johnny Sablanca, Bob Evans.

You know, she had different relationships that were far more relevant.

That's just the one she's known for.

And Paula was really pissed off.

She's like, why does Caraa work all the time?

Why can't I get jobs?

And Paul said, Carra's boyfriend did it killed two white people.

But models also started leaving Paul.

They moved on, they found new agencies, even Paul's good friend Carrie Young.

There was a time that I I think I was.

Just ended up back with Elite.

You know, I was with when Donald had an agency for a little bit.

I was there Donald Trump.

Yes, he had a modeling agency back then too, and he and Carrie Young had started dating and they kept dating for a couple of years.

So Kara had to break this news to Paul.

You know what, everything runs its course.

It could be a boyfriend or a relationship that ends your relationship.

With someone that books you.

It doesn't necessarily have to be because someone.

Did something wrong.

It just it runs its course.

I just said, you know, well, I don't think that we're working for each other anymore.

And Stephanie Seymour was out too.

Paul says it happened because he and Stephanie had something special.

She made a man feel like he was the only man in the world.

It was intoxicating, like you could do anything.

She made you feel like you could do anything, and just.

The sweetest, sweetest human.

Oh my god, step was so sweet and unlookable.

Unlookable.

What a great word.

It's an omer special.

I created that word when I met Stephanie Seymour.

You can't even look at her.

She's so insultingly pretty that you're like whoa, oh, I can't even look at you.

Paul says he and Stephanie had even moved in together for a time after she was dating Axel.

Rose and Stephanie Seymour did not comment for this podcast.

We had to get all of Stephanie's belongings out of Axel's freaking huge estate in la and so I had my friend and a bunch of my other boys dress up as movers and they and they moved all of Stephanie.

He thought they were a moving company.

They were just dudes.

We dressed up as movers to move everything out of that house.

So one morning I get a phone call from one of my boys that's living at my house and he said, Fish, your jeep is an ashtray.

What oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, your jeep is an ashtray.

Somebody torched it in the middle of the fucking night.

Is it a coincidence?

The two days before that, I just moved out all of our shit out of Axel's house.

He's sitting up there in a spiral staircase smoking a fucking Tipperillo, some long cigarette as he's freaking out as my boys, dressed as movers are moving all of her I thought Stephanie shit out of the house.

And to this day and I'll stand by it, showed me one hit song to that cat.

I mean the band got the band left, you know, disseminated six months a year later.

The guy was a fucking mess.

Why because she had that power.

It's true that Guns and Roses fell off after the Axel Stephanie breakup.

They even did a cover.

Album where Axel sang a classic breakup song.

Ya.

Stephanie went on to date Peter Brandt, but Paul says something happened after Stephanie signed a big contract and FYI, Neither Stephanie nor Peter Brandt responded to our requests for interviews.

Stephanie was at the time lived with Peter Brandt, who owned Interview magazine.

He's a he's a billion You're a rich, rich motherfucker.

So so Stephanie says Peter, and I want to invite you for a signing party at Peter's office.

Please come over.

So I go over there and there's a boll of champagne there on the table.

The contract is sitting there.

Peter looks at me and he goes, I just want you to know that you're you're fired.

What Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we're terminating our relationship with you.

I said, first of all, I don't have a relationship with you.

He said, yeah yeah.

My friend is now running IMG and now I AMG at this time is a piece of shit agency that no one took seriously.

I said, let me get this straight.

That piece of shit agency I'MG that has no stars.

What oh yeah, yeah yeah.

But I want you to know something, Paul, we really appreciate you.

Oh shit, the fucking appreciation thing again.

It gets worse.

Remember the other big time supermodel Paul signed after Jennifer Hermenez Well around this time, she also left Paul for another agent, and Paul got it into his head that it was all her boyfriend's fault, her a list movie star boyfriend.

And unfortunately, Paul knew just where to find him.

And I walked into a nightclub one night and there's and his freaking goofball mooks, bodyguards and friends and motorcycle guys.

The guy just cost me millions of dollars.

Millions of fucking dollars.

I'm not a rich man at this time.

I got a few pennies, but I'm not like you know, I'm not like having like, I'm not a super super rich guy or anything.

You just took one of my stars, my vast That kind of opened up the floodgates for me.

So me and have a little bit of an altercation.

We have a little conversation.

It doesn't go so well.

And then one of his boys comes up to me and he says something to me, and I said, come here, let me just whisper something in your ear, and I bend over and I knocked his ass out.

It was a hard punch and Paul ended up in a lawsuit over it.

He took me to court, asked my mom about this.

I didn't have the cash at the time.

My mom had to put up one hundred grand I lost the court case.

So it stung.

Because it's stung financially.

It's stung financially.

I was gonna say a little bit, but it's stung financially.

It probably stung on a personal level too.

Paul's not the kind of guy who likes to get left, but he's even less prepared to rip the polaroid of a girl off his forehead and finally see himself in the mirror.

I lost everything.

I lost all my money, I lost my home, I lost my buildings.

Paul shows a unshaved, a mess, tuxedo shirt open, no bow tie, tuxedo jacking on.

But the callers all rolled up and it's all He's just like the coolest guy in the world.

And it ended up making a million dollars a year profit from mep astatamy.

Fuck you man, We're only making fifty thousand dollars today and there's some other bitch making seventy five thousand dollars.

I said, you're fucking kidding me.

That's all next on Model Wars.

Model Wars was a production of iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Model Wars was executive produced and hosted by Vanessa Gregoriotis.

Our senior writer was Michael Kenyon Meyer.

Julia K.

S Levine was our producer and reporter.

Our senior producer was Lily Houston Smith, and our assistant editor was Emma Simonoff.

We had story and production help from Shoshi Shmulowitz, Ali Hainey.

And Blake Rook.

Our production manager was Ashley Warren, and our studio recordist was Ewan Lyi Tremuen, sound design, mix and engineering by Mark McCadam.

iHeart Podcasts.

Executive producers were Jennifer Bassett and Katrina Norbel.

The show was also executive produced by Rachel Winter and Campside Media's Josh Dean, Adam.

Hoff, and Matt Schaer.

If you'd like to access behind the scenes content from Model Wars and Campside Media, please go to join campside dot com.

That's j O I n C A M P s I d E dot com.

If you enjoyed Model Wars, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks so much for listening.