The name Wilhelmina is one of the tops in the field of modeling. Named for Model Wilhelmina Cooper, a very prevalent cover girl in her time, who wasn't satisfied with her representation and broke away to form her own agency, they provide talent for runway shows, fashion shoots, commercials, music videos... and their models are constantly in demand.
Let's put this in context. The year was 2006. Film and television actresses were starting to get more magazine covers than their supermodel counterparts (back when magazine covers still mattered). I don't think anyone in the Industry was panicking yet, but it appeared that a shift was occurring in the fashion world, and designers suddenly wanted mannequins that had a different kind of recognition. That's a bit of the backdrop for the world of this reality series.
I think most casual observers of anything related to fashion might view it as a world of self-importance where things that "normal" people would never notice are glaring issues, here.
Enter the team of "The Agency." These intrepid bookers are tasked with finding new talent, getting current models hired, and making sure their agency remains THE Agency. And that's the point of this series. It isn't about the models, it's about the company they work for.
Model Agents are more than just the people who take their 20 and 20 (20 percent fee from the client and 20 percent commission on the model's pay). They are like parental figures, strict taskmasters, educators, and, of course, they have their own problems, which they might just take out on whomever is there at the moment. Freud could have had a field day with this group!
This show pulled no punches and showed some serious spats between Agents, between Models and Agents, even some ugly exchanges with the Agents and prospective models, all in the name of supposedly "getting it right." But a lot of the time, this came off like tantrum throwing, nit-picking, passive-aggressive comments, or just plain aggressive comments. Not everyone expects or would tolerate this kind of treatment from the people who are supposed to be finding them work, which is why there was an episode where a model quit!
That, to me, is why "The Agency" is unavailable to view anywhere in the US and why even the names of the agents at the time (the group's president, Sean Patterson, Pink Francis, Carlos Paz, Lorri Shackelford, Greg Chan, Lola Milligan, Anita Norris and most especially Becky Southwick) seem to have been obscured, too.
The style of how agents work has changed drastically in the past fifteen or so years (I don't believe any booker is telling a model to "lose weight" these days), and that kind of treatment by an agent isn't seen as okay. But it did provide a lot of drama for audiences in the Aughts, and was, generally, true to what was going on at the time, not just at Wilhelmina, but at most, if not all, of the major modeling houses.
New York is absolutely a part because this is the fashion capital of the nation and one of the three most important locations for clothing design in the world, the others being Paris and Milan. There is always big money on the table, with designers able to book a model for an ad campaign, or even making them the face of a clothing line, with paydays running in the four to five figures per job, per day. The glamor, the style, the anger, the fear... it all comes in when the competition is tough, when you're trying to reinvent your brand while still keeping it successful and when anything can set someone off to a tirade of misplaced rage.
Of course, today, Wilhelmina has their own Instagram account which you can peruse, and their minimalist and lovely website with the names and photos of their roster of models to view. The drama that this series blatantly laid bare, is gone now (or at least isn't visible to the outside world), and it seems like that's how they want it, moving forward.
