Exploitation of women in the fashion industry

A beautiful woman sits in front of a video camera. Her name is Sena Cech and she is a fashion model.

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Halfway through the meeting Cech is asked to strip. She does as instructed and takes off her clothes. Then the photographer starts undressing as well. "Baby - can you do something a little sexy," he tells her. The photographer's assistant, who is watching, eggs her on. What's supposed to be the casting for a high-end fashion shoot turns into something more like an audition for a top-shelf magazine.

This is the ugly, sleazy side of the modelling industry, the side few insiders like to talk about. It's one of the most secretive businesses in the world, which is ironic when you consider that it is also one of the most pervasive. Its stars are some of the most recognised icons of our time, household names whose bodies are frequently emblazoned across 40ft-high billboards, yet apart from the occasional flurry of publicity about anorexia or drug-taking, outsiders know surprisingly little about the multimillion-pound business which profits from some of world's most beautiful women. Models rarely give interviews, and if they do they're as studiedly anodyne and vague as Premiership footballers quizzed outside the changing room after a match.

A 16-year-old model is on a photo shoot in Paris. She has very little experience of modelling and is unaccompanied by her agency or parents. She leaves the studio to go to the bathroom and meets the photographer - "a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world's top names", according to Ziff - in the hallway. He starts fiddling with her clothes. "But you're used to this," says Ziff. "People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It's not strange to be handled like that." Then suddenly he puts his hands between her legs and sexually assaults her. "She has no experience of boys, she hasn't even been kissed," says Ziff. "She was so shocked she just stood there and didn't say anything. He just looked at her and walked away and they did the rest of the shoot. And she never told anyone."

The industry has always had a predatory side. Anyone approached in the street by a middle-aged man and asked if they'd like to be a model would think twice about giving him their details (which is the reason model scouts are generally women). There is something inherently intimate about the whole business of fashion photography - the all-seeing lens, the exposed subject, the powerful photographer. What's shocking, listening to Ziff, is how prevalent, and how far up the fashion food chain, sexual exploitation goes. "Vulnerable girls are being put into a potentially predatory environment," says Ziff. "What's in the agency's interest is not always best for the girl, and if she's in a compromising situation, she doesn't necessarily have anyone to turn to."

The sexual side of the industry can go beyond the shoots, says Ziff. "When you are working at a higher level there is no separation between life and work. You are expected to go to certain parties and schmooze. There is a pressure to have a drink with someone with an ulterior motive and not offend them because they may book you for a $100,000 campaign. They have the power." In the past, she has found herself in compromising situations that she wishes she'd dealt with differently. She tells the story of a 16-year-old model who complained when a 45-year-old photographer made a pass at her. "Her agency said she should have slept with him." "Imagine being an eastern European model from Latvia," says Ole, "who can barely speak English and is supporting a family back home. Imagine how compromised they are."