Casting director James Scully came out of sabbatical last night to call out the fashion industry and its treatment of models. In a series of posts on his Instagram stories, Scully detailed the phone calls, texts, and DMs he received from models and agents over the course of NYFW, explaining he was told of fittings which went ‘from 5 to over 11 hours’. He also added that some of the girls stayed in castings all night, only to be cancelled at 6am.

This is not the first time Scully has spoken on the treatment of models. In 2017 he also took to social media to call out “serial abusers” Maida Boina and Rami Fernandes, Balenciaga’s casting directors at the time, who made models wait for over three hours in the dark before being seen. He also spoke of the lack of diversity and use of underage models. 

Although things have improved in the time since, with models given a platform to speak out against big designers via initiatives like Sara Ziff's Model Alliance, through his posts Scully has reminded the industry of its responsibilty to protect models, stating ‘people should know better’. 

“We’ve come so far and people should know better… I know production can get out of control but we know better. So I’m going to chalk this one as hopefully a one-off and return to my time off”.