Model Reform.

Sustainably Speaking Podcast with Aalia Mauro

Join Aalia and Elizabeth Peyton-Jones, CEO and Founder of Models Trust, as they address making the modeling industry safer and more sustainable. Elizabeth touches on how to elevate workplace environments for working models. And the wide range of workplace risks that endanger not only their physical health but their emotional and financial wellbeing, circling back to their diets which enable these same conditions. While living abroad in Hong Kong and Russia, Elizabeth was introduced to holistic medicine and began her journey to becoming a master herbalist. For over two decades, Elizabeth has been a naturopath, herbalist, and therapist starting her career with private clients in a London Clinic, which grew into a global company called EPJHealth. Her passion for changing people’s perceptions of what good health really looks like, excelled in 2016, as the British Fashion Council invited Elizabeth to create a diet for models. Initially puzzled, she researched for a year. Speaking with models, casting directors, and photographers abroad, noting the problem of the industry's obsession with the size zero and the consequences of enacting these restrictive conditions at such a young and impressionable age. In the face of complacency, Elizabeth set up Models Trust. In 2017 Models Trust ran its first model workshop with Europe’s leading model agency, Models 1, and a year later, a one-week induction program for new models in collaboration with the London College of Fashion. Models Trust also planned and executed the very first industry-wide conference on modeling, bringing models, model agencies, brands, photographers, casting directors, agents, and publishers, to talk about standards needed in the industry. Models Trust was the first to champion elevating workplace practices and norms for models through industry-wide standards. It signed up models, model agencies, and fashion brands to The Pledge and later was invited by James Scully to inform LVMH and Kering on their own set of standards, We Care for Models. More recently, Models Trust has campaigned to keep modern slavery and human trafficking out of modeling, which has led to Elizabeth talking about her vision to the United Nations General Assembly. Concerned about the slow progress of improvement, in March 2020 Models Trust launched Brighter Future: a year-long, industry-wide consultation aimed at identifying the most effective solutions for making modeling safer and more sustainable. From the results of Brighter Future, Models Trust developed an anonymous feedback survey, allowing models an anonymous voice to speak up while allowing agencies to demonstrate good representation, rewarding high-performing agencies by awarding them the prestigious Models Trust Certification Mark. Elizabeth continues to work tirelessly with the fashion industry to change the perception of what it is to be a working model.