Just over a hundred years ago, around the dawn of Chanel, and with the golden age of silent film in full swing, a German-Jewish immigrant to the US by the name of William Morris found an opportunity to represent creative talent and make a buck. Having spent the previous two decades as a vaudeville agent, Morris formally incorporated William Morris Agency in New York in 1918 and began representing the biggest film stars of the day: the likes of Charlie
Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and Mae West. Regarded as the first great talent agency in show business, WMA evolved and helped shape the face of entertainment. It made its first acquisition of another company – the Berg-Allenberg talent agency – in the late 1940s, joining Frank Capra, Clark Gable and Judy Garland to the roster, and in the 1960s acted as agent for pop stars including The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and Sonny & Cher.

Throughout the decades that followed, the agency continued a mergers-and-acquisitions approach, pre-dating the strategic activity of a modern-day luxury conglomerate like LVMH or Kering. Merging with Endeavor in 2009 and acquiring IMG Models in 2013 – and many other agencies in-between and since – the company now represents the NFL alongside make-up artists, the Frieze Art Fair alongside supermodels, wrestlers and the UFC alongside literary talent. Today, the Gesamtkunstwerk of creative agencies known as Endeavor has a fashion division, WME Fashion, that includes Art + Commerce (Steven Meisel, Grace Coddington, Guido, Willy Vanderperre, Peter Philips, Ib Kamara, Craig McDean…), IMG Models (Bella Hadid, Gemma Ward, Alek Wek, Irina Shayk, Alex Consani…), IMG Events (British Fashion Awards, London Fashion Week, Milano Moda Uomo…), and The Wall Group (Kate Young, Gucci Westman, Yusef Williams, Mary Greenwell, Emily Cheng…). As a result, it has become a one-stop shop that luxury brands can tap into, where its specialist agencies can crossover to seamlessly create a campaign, from who’s in front to who’s behind the camera. But not just brands benefit from this unique group structure – on the flip-side, if you’re a photographer on the Art + Commerce roster and want to develop and work in, say, filmmaking, the division leaders of the wider Endeavor network can get together and instigate this career progression unlike any other business.

Keeping WME Fashion an industry-leading force is the task of Susan Plagemann, who joined as President of the division in 2022. A Condé Nast veteran, Plagemann was initially publisher of Vogue in 2010 before being appointed Chief Business Officer of the Style Division in 2018, leading the commercial sides of Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Allure, and Glamour. Having been both witness to and active player in the rise of publications going digital, the disruption that social media brought to strategy, the increasing convergence of entertainment and fashion, and luxury brands’ ever-changing creative needs in the face of all this, System was keen to sit down with Plagemann to understand, from her unique perspective, where it’s all headed.

Jonathan Wingfield: Firstly, tell me about your role at WME Fashion.

Susan Plagemann: What WME Fashion represents is four companies: IMG Models, The Wall Group, Art + Commerce and IMG Fashion Events. Those four companies were acquired by our parent company Endeavor at various times, but there was never a crossover among them. When I was hired, my job was to take those four companies and bring them together while respecting and honouring their individual IPs and expertise. The three things that we’re trying to do as a result of that is, one, we want to be best in class for our talent, which means we want talent to see us as strategic, thoughtful leaders ahead of the curve. We want them to see us as creative people who actually understand their world, and how to help them build their career, continue their career, or pivot their career.

Two, we want to be much further upstream with brands, which is an area I have a lot of expertise in, having come from the commercial side of the publishing world. In essence, our goal is to be proactive with the brands we’re working with. When I started at WME Fashion, I spent the first year on the road visiting our global offices and meeting with CEOs, CMOs, creative directors and designers. It was a listening tour that would help our teams better understand each brand’s priorities, their strategy, and how we could continue to collaborate. We have a lot of very long-standing, deep-seated relationships across the board in fashion, beauty, and luxury, and it was important for us to listen to those leaders, understand their direction, hear what they were hoping to achieve for the year ahead, and understand how they measure success. It was also an opportunity to share what WME Fashion could offer as a collective, and to show how WME Fashion works within the larger WME and Endeavor ecosystem. For instance, last year we started working on an anniversary project for an Italian brand which involves not only ideating what they should do; it involves talent, production around a location, tying in a creative director to help them execute on it, hair and makeup, celebrities: the entire thing.

The third thing is something that this company calls ‘architecture’, and that is, I think, really key to the success of WME. It’s one of the most important points of our meaningful differentiation, what makes us so unique as a company. In the same way that I oversee our fashion portfolio, you have individuals who run sports, music, books, scripted and unscripted television, motion pictures, endorsements, digital, and theatre departments. A lot of times they will have individuals that they’re signing, or they’ve signed and have said they want to get involved in fashion. Our goal is then to help them understand what that means, because fashion is a big word, and it can cover a lot of different things. And then we help them create a strategy around that. Similarly, it can go the other way. So, there could be an artist at Art + Commerce who wants to get into film, or maybe there is a model at IMG who actually wants to become a stylist. Or maybe they’re a makeup artist at The Wall Group who wants to get into unscripted television. So, it’s back and forth, and we’re really fortunate because we have these impressive leaders in other areas who can help guide that.

Give me an example of when those people are in a room together and how that plays out, in terms of the exchanging of ideas and contacts?

They’re in rooms together all the time. I’m not privy to every single meeting, but I’ll give you an example. There is a talent from The Wall Group who is super established, very successful, but who wants to look beyond what they’re currently doing. So we pulled the team together, and that team consisted of someone from unscripted television, someone from the literary division, someone from the music division, and we had a brainstorm. We gave that artist ten questions we wanted them to answer. This isn’t a questionnaire that we send out. It’s a live conversation where we’re like: How do you define success? What are your favourite brands? In your pastime, what is it that you enjoy most? Literally things to get into their psyche, like what creatively motivates them. Then we’ll take those answers, pull a team together, and we’ll all sit and brainstorm ideas on how we can use those answers to create a strategy for that person. It’s just approaching it differently because the company is really putting resources behind this type of thinking and effort. It’s not, ‘Okay, let me call a friend and see if we can get them in over here.’ It’s actually thoughtful and real. The decks they come back with are impressive, and I’ve yet to see an artist go, ‘Oh, you failed.’ We’ve had 99% of them say, ‘Oh my gosh, wow, I had no idea.’

This issue of System is exploring the evolving rapport between fashion and entertainment, and the scenario you’ve described is a palpable example of that. What are your thoughts on that evolution, how the fashion industry and entertainment talent have become increasingly intertwined?

Well, fashion certainly isn’t new to WME. IMG Models has been around for 36 years. The Wall Group 23 years, Art + Commerce 42 years, and IMG Fashion Events 22 years. How the company as a whole is organizing itself around fashion is what has evolved. I think that’s an important distinction in terms of how these worlds have been converging for a long time. I mean, celebrities have been on the covers of fashion magazines, and front row at shows, and a part of campaigns for a very long time. But I think it just continues to crescendo. Given where I was working before and where I am now, I certainly have had a front row seat to really see how that accelerated. It all ties back to one thing: storytelling. As our company sits at the nexus of fashion and world-class storytellers, we see a lot of potential in bringing the worlds of fashion and entertainment closer together. Our clients are content distributors and e-commerce centres in their own right, and WME Fashion’s ability to move them across the worlds of fashion and entertainment provides new financial and creative opportunities for them. At the end of the day, our key to success is how we help our talent tell great stories or express themselves in ways that people want to consume, be entertained by, or bring them joy.

You mentioned travelling the world and meeting with contacts who oversee the decision-making in fashion, beauty, and luxury brands. What did you learn from your discussions?

I think the biggest overarching thing that we heard was the potential for the ease of execution of what we offer. And what we offer is a place with a group of people that really understand your business, how it works, the ebbs and flows, the importance of timing, how things have to be delivered, the importance of the brand and protecting it alongside its aesthetic. We work with multi-million, billion-dollar companies that work hard to protect who they are and what they represent, so to have someone roll in and touch that, you want to make sure that they understand and are equipped to do the job. Two other areas of focus for brands are innovation and talent. Brands recognize the importance of working with and investing in talent as storytellers on behalf of their brands to connect with their audience. We’re seeing more and more brands tap into the voices of talent who they may not have traditionally considered and that strategy has proven fruitful – whether that be engaging with more athletes or tapping into digital creators.

What are the metrics of success for your work with talent or a brand?

For the talent we represent, it is definitely satisfaction, that they’re happy, that they feel creatively driven, challenged and motivated. That they feel we are listening and taking care of them. I think for brands it’s more a question of building business partnerships with them as opposed to one-offs; ones that we can evergreen and keep coming back to.

In your own previous professional experiences, can you recall some landmark moments when you observed – or indeed instigated – fashion really playing a fundamental role in shaping contemporary popular culture? And conversely when popular entertainment started really shaping fashion?

Roughly eight years ago, there was a breakthrough moment when Gucci switched designers and we created an entire program for them based off a marketing idea on how to wear and wardrobe the new designer. Titled ‘100 ways to wear Gucci’, it was so successful that it became their entire platform for North America, and then their global effort for the year. It was a big storytelling moment for the brand and its success was powerful – being able to understand their needs and create something that was unequivocally different from anything else they had seen was so rewarding.

In your career path, you’ve moved from media to agency – crudely put, from content to talent. What do you think your own career pivot symbolizes about the broader shifts in dynamics and power at the heart of the fashion and entertainment industries?

I think influence has changed and there’s also been a radical shift in who owns that influence, and I think that will continue. I was just reading an article about two new platforms, and I was thinking about when TikTok started and everyone was kind of tentatively thinking, ‘Well, let’s see about this…’, and now look at its influence on how people communicate. There are brands putting 100% of their focus on TikTok. It’s game changing. But I still think that talent continues to be at the core of that storytelling for brands and companies. The platforms themselves aren’t telling the story – it’s the talent on those platforms who are telling the story.

Do you remember a key moment when social media started to play a really significant role?

I remember when Instagram came on the scene and it was really this overnight sensation in terms of people adapting to it, using it, posting on it. As someone who was stewarding a very big, important brand [Vogue] in the fashion ecosystem, I remember thinking very quickly: ‘We have to be there. But how can we be there without cannibalising what we do? How can we be there where it becomes a continuation of what we do?’ But definitely, I would say, for me anyway, personally and professionally, Instagram was the one that really felt like a gamechanger.

Celebrity collabs with luxury fashion brands are increasingly prevalent. What do you consider they represent?

I think the goal always has to be that it’s a genuine exchange. I think what happens is that creative people need additional outlets. People meet, exchange ideas, and execute on them. I don’t think that you can put together something that’s a gimmick and sell it at that level and have it be successful. I think it genuinely comes from people meeting and building a rapport, finding an intersection between the two of them that actually results in something new.

Can you describe your first ‘pinch me’ moment in your career; when you couldn’t believe you were getting paid to do what you were doing?

I remember going to my first New York Fashion Week show, Isaac Mizrahi, when I worked at Mademoiselle magazine. It was before photographers were in a pit so they were all lined around the stage. I vividly remember a RuPaul song coming on and the girls – among them Christy, Naomi and Cindy – walking down the runway. I just couldn’t believe that this was actually part of my job.

Who’s given you the best advice across your career?

Valerie Salembier – former SVP, Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer of Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire and Town & Country – was an incredible boss and is one of my mentors. We still talk – she’s someone that brought me into all the rooms and meetings that I probably had no business being in, but she believed in me and did it. To this day, I really feel like I owe her a lot.

What do you think this era will be remembered for in, say, 20-25 years?

Speed, agility, and innovation.

Finally, what do you think it takes to become a great agent at WME?

Great agents and talent managers are well-read, they know what’s going on in the world beyond their sector and have a deep understanding of what’s happening in culture. They are tenacious self-starters who are curious, have an eye for unique talent, and an understanding of how to strategically build someone’s personal brand. The most successful have incredible relationships, are creative in their thinking and solution-oriented, and are willing to push the boundaries. They don’t back down when they get a no. What sets WME apart is our unique ability to build multihyphenates – we don’t believe talent can be great at only one thing, we want to harness the potential for creatives to explore all aspects of the industry.