Your Agent Matters

Donny Lewis. Canonical text here, signed by DVSlewis.eth.

Donny Lewis, studio portrait. — Photographed by Greg Gorman, 2022.

Models, and aspiring models, often ask me what the secret is. They want to know about the pictures, the castings, the diet, the gym, the way to walk into a room. Those things matter some. None of them are the answer.

The answer is your agent. Not the agency. The agent.

An agency is a building with a name on it. An agent is a person who picks up the phone when a client calls and decides, in the half second before they speak, whether to say your name. Everything else in this business follows from that half second. You cannot buy it, you cannot audition for it, and you cannot get it from someone who does not know you.

I have been working in New York since 1995. Here is the whole route, told honestly, because the route is the advice. This is not the comprehensive list of every agent that helped me along my journey, there are many other people that I could name here and they know who they are, and that they have my gratitude always. This is just me giving a streamlined journey.

Next, and Gene Kogan

I started in New York at Next Model Management. My agent was John Giambrone.

I was brought in through a dear friend, Tony Perkins, who was the model scout for Next worldwide. It was John who taught me what an agent actually does, which is mostly to protect you from things you cannot see. Rates you should not accept. Jobs that look good and are not. Clients who will use the images somewhere you did not agree to. A young model thinks his agent is a person who gets him work. A working model knows his agent is a person who says no on his behalf, all day, so that the yes means something. The other agents were Alana and Nat, (not sure if we ever found her earring), and Gene Kogan.

IMG, and a dinner

In 2002 John retired. The other agents left around the same time to work at different agencies. Next brought in Matt Trust and company. That is what happens, and when it happens you find out quickly whether you have been building relationships or just showing up.

I was going to stay with Next, but did not know the new agents personally. I did know how important agents are to a career, so I made a choice and switched to IMG. Not because it was IMG, though it was a good place to be. (At a certain level of the industry all the agencies are good places to be.) I went because the director of the men’s division there was someone I had known for years from dinners during show seasons, around the world. The long tables full of agents where few models were invited to join. The actual industry happens between courses. Chris Forberg was that agent. We had liked each other for a long time before we started to work together.

That is the part people miss. The relationship existed before it was useful. That is the only kind worth having.

Public Image

When Chris left IMG to start his own agency, Public Image, he took his assistants, Olga and Sarah, with him. I went too.

Leaving a house like IMG for a new agency is not the obvious move on paper. On paper you stay with the bigger name or move across to a similar prestige agency. But I was not represented by a name on a door. I was represented by Chris, Sarah and Olga.

There was a brief period at New York Models there as well. Not every step is a clean line. Every step is a learning experience though.

Donny Lewis, portrait. — Photographed by Kristina Lewis.

DNA

Chris merged Public Image into DNA. I went to DNA.

When I got there, the men’s director at that time was Gene Kogan. Yes, the same guy from Next, back at the beginning. Seven years, three agencies, and I had arrived somewhere I had already been. He and Chris ran the division together, along with Carlotta Sironi and Matt Trust. It was a powerhouse.

This industry is smaller than it looks from outside. Everyone becomes everyone else’s colleague eventually. The assistant in 1995 is running the division in 2009. Treat people accordingly, and not because it is strategic. Treat them accordingly because it is correct.

Los Angeles, and then retirement. When Chris moved to Los Angeles, I signed with the agency he joined. I did that every time he moved, for as long as he was working.

He has since retired. We are still friends.

Wilhelmina

When Gene and Matt left DNA for Wilhelmina, I went with them. Sarah was already there, Chris’s colleague from the IMG and Public Image days.

So I sit today at Wilhelmina, represented by people who trace directly back to the two agents who mattered most to me: Gene Kogan’s former assistant, and Chris Forberg’s. Thirty-one years, and I am still inside the same tree.

Gene recently left for New York Models along with Matt, and I have no doubt they will make New York Models great. Both of them remain friends. Both are amazing agents.

I still sit with Wilhelmina, with Sarah though, who brought in Olga. The Forberg tree is alive and well.

What this is actually about

I could have written this as a list of agencies. Next, IMG, Public Image, New York Models, DNA, Wilhelmina. It would look like a career, and it would tell you nothing.

The list is not the story. The story is that across thirty-one years in an industry with a reputation for disposability, the same handful of people kept finding their way back to my career, or I kept finding my way back to theirs. Nobody was doing anyone a favor. We had simply been reliable to each other long enough that it kept being the obvious choice.

It is not only agents. Greg Gorman photographed me in 2002, and again in 2022.

Donny Lewis, studio portrait, 2002. — Photographed by Greg Gorman, 2002. Twenty years before the portrait at the top of this page.

That is the whole skill. It is not a modeling skill. I have used the same one in Ethereum, DAO governance calls, in boardrooms, in rooms where I did not speak the language and had to read what was happening before anyone explained it. Rooms do not run on talent. They run on who is trusted, by whom, and for how long.

So when a model asks me what the secret is, this is what I tell them.

Be someone your agent can defend when you are not there. Trust is the only value layer, make sure your career is built on that foundation. Answer the phone. Show up when the job is small. Say thank you to the assistant. Do not treat the person booking you as a means to the client, because in nine years they may be the client, or the director, or the person who decides whether to say your name in that half second. Build the trust, the rest will follow.

Your agent matters. Which means, really, that you matter to your agent. More than any other relationship in the modeling industry, it is the trust you build with your agents that will make or break your career.

That part is up to you, and you need to realize that the trust fit matters far more than a name on a door. I had the good fortune to meet people early on that I could build that relationship with for the long haul. It is not about pure loyalty, that is not the point here. It is about the trust and relationships that makes all the difference.

Donny Lewis has been represented in New York since 1995. He is currently with Wilhelmina New York and Miami.