At this point in time, it’s only the novice that will sit on the fence when it comes to evaluating how successful the fashion and modeling industry is transforming into. With the ongoing fanfare in fashion weekends all across the country like the GT Fashion Week, Lagos Fashion Week and The Africa Fashion Week, there’s a surge in interest and capital in around the fashion industry but the question now is, are the models, the key component in exhibiting these shows benefiting from the boom?

The week leading to GT Fashion Weekend, I drove through island to mainland, seeing most of the models I have done editorials on, on attached billboard-like banners all across the city, was great sighting but when I put calls through to congratulate the models, I was shocked that most was not informed that their images will be on those advertisements. Arguably, that simply confirms the fact that they were not paid for their images to be used. With the amount of money invested in the promotion of the event, that doesn’t sound good.

I dogged in to investigate how remunerations are for the models, how they are treated and the time-line to when they finally get paid. The truth was slightly troubling but looking through the lens of the music industry 18years ago, I tried to understand. Each model gets a contract to be paid two hundred thousand naira for the duration of the six-day event period. But they will only receive one hundred and forty thousand naira after all deductions are made. That is #kinda fair enough!

The other issues are, interns coordinate them disrespectfully (That’s me trying to avoid using harsher word). Feeding – they only get one meat-pie each to eat in the morning but lunch and dinner they confess is not bad. Payment – they never get paid till after over a month or two. Disparities within colleagues – International models brought in are treated as premium. In conclusion, as much as I am glad with the boom in fashion / modeling industry, it’s high time the organizers at different levels, begins to manage the models like the multi-million naira industry they are building.