Eileen Ford, founder of Ford Model Agency, dies at 92
NEW YORK – Modeling agency founder Eileen Ford, who shaped a generation’s standards of beauty as she built an empire and launched the careers of Candice Bergen, Lauren Hutton, Christie Brinkley and countless others, has died.
She was 92 and died Wednesday of complications from a brain tumor and osteoporosis, according to Arielle Baran, a spokeswoman for Derris & Co., which handles public relations for Ford and announced the death Thursday.
Ford was known for her steely manner and eye for talent. She demanded professionalism from her models, putting them on strict diets and firing those with a taste for late-night revelry. Her discipline pushed Ford Model Agency to the top, making multimillionaires of both Ford and her late husband, Jerry, who handled the business side.
The typical Ford woman was tall, thin, often blond, with wide-set eyes and a long neck. Eileen Ford was known to tell hopefuls shorter than 5 foot 7 to give up their dreams.
Ford’s daughter Katie, who at one time ran the company, said in a statement that her mother’s “greatest thrill was to spot a model in the daily course of life.” She’d then follow the prospect surreptitiously to assess her. A few of those finds went on to fame, including Vendela Kirsebom, whom Ford discovered in a restaurant in Sweden, and Karen Graham, whom Ford spotted at Bonwit Teller department store and who went on to become the face of Estee Lauder beauty products.
The classic Ford look changed remarkably little over the years and set a standard for the industry. Height and a willowy build remain paramount, though Ford was disdainful of the “waif” look – typified by British model Kate Moss – popular in the early 1990s.
Ford maintained that a model’s charisma was as important as her looks and prided herself on being able to detect successful personalities.
“There’s a cockiness to them … They’re just going to be good and you can just tell it,” she told Life magazine in 1970. “I see girls that I know – I absolutely know – will be star models within just a matter of weeks, and they always are.”
Ford felt a motherly responsibility toward her models, often inviting the youngest to live at her Upper East Side apartment. She prohibited the young Kim Basinger from going out before finishing her French homework.
“Models are a business, and they have to treat themselves as a business,” Ford told The Toronto Star in 1988. “Which means they have to take care of themselves and give up all the young joys.”