Matthew Moneypenny (his real name) is Hollywood handsome, with a dressed-down wardrobe of Saint Laurent and an easy patter somewhere between pitchman and showman.
He laughs loudly and has a favorite table at Sant Ambroeus in the West Village, as well as a preferred room at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, Calif. He looks like what industry types call “talent,” but Mr. Moneypenny, 46, isn’t talent (though talented). In the congested little world of fashion image-making, he is talent’s agent, the bargaining power behind the throne.
Mr. Moneypenny’s job is to secure high-revenue deals for top-tier images and image-makers. In effect, he said with a practiced twinkle over cookies at a Sant Ambroeus corner table, “to make the world a prettier place.”
Mr. Moneypenny is the president and chief executive of Trunk Archive, a photography licensing agency, whose back catalog of images run in magazines and product packaging, are loaded as smartphone backdrops and hang on hotel walls. In Trunk’s trunk are images by hundreds of photographers, including many of fashion’s marquee names: Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, Arthur Elgort and Patrick Demarchelier.
Mr. Moneypenny has built Trunk into a digital, long-tail boutique of stylish imagery, making the photographers (and the company) significant amounts of money in the process. They are high-end images for high-end prices.
“If Corbis and Getty are Kmart and Walmart,” Mr. Moneypenny said, ticking off two of the larger stock-photo agencies, “we’re Bergdorf Goodman.”
Having made a success of reselling existing images, Mr. Moneypenny is now getting into the business of creating new ones.
Fueled by investment capital from Waddell & Reed, which has taken positions in companies like Richemont and LVMH, Mr. Moneypenny has spent the last two years quietly buying creative agencies. The result is Great Bowery, a group that will include Trunk Archive and 11 other assignment and licensing agencies under its umbrella.
Great Bowery is a mega-agency, one whose ambition is to rebalance the scales, empowering those who make fashion’s imagery — photographers, fashion stylists, hair and makeup artists and set designers — and checking, implicitly, the powerful and increasingly integrated luxury companies and media conglomerates that have traditionally commissioned their work.
He sees it as nothing less than the fashion analogue of the rise of the agency system in Hollywood, which unseated the film studios as the sole kingmakers and deal-brokers.
“If one can say three pillars were originally music, television and film, I would argue that fashion is now the fourth pillar,” Mr. Moneypenny said. “Twenty years ago, it was the socialite on the Upper East Side or the resident of Mayfair or Beverly Hills that was aware of what was coming down the Chanel or Dior runway. There’s so much more interest about the creativity that comes out of this world.” (...)
Most of the agencies now under the aegis of Great Bowery, like CLM, M.A.P, Management & Artists and Streeters, are unfamiliar to the public. So, too, are many of the artists they represent.
Their work is not. You have seen it in the glossy spreads of fashion magazines, the ad campaigns that precede them, the billboards and bus shelters luxury companies commandeer and the videos that run on their Instagram accounts and websites.
If they are not, on the whole, household names the way CAA clients like Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Madonna are, Mr. Moneypenny is betting that they can be. Their rates can already run Hollywood stratospheric (“It’s not unusual for a highly talented artist in our world to generate a seven-figure annual income,” he said), and their visibility is rising to match. Is Pat McGrath, the most in-demand of the runway makeup artists, say, primed to become a name-brand megastar?
“Some designers are big famous stars,” Mr. Baron said. “Also photographers are, and stylists are, and models are. Everybody’s kind of important. It’s become popular culture.”
He laughs loudly and has a favorite table at Sant Ambroeus in the West Village, as well as a preferred room at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, Calif. He looks like what industry types call “talent,” but Mr. Moneypenny, 46, isn’t talent (though talented). In the congested little world of fashion image-making, he is talent’s agent, the bargaining power behind the throne.
Mr. Moneypenny’s job is to secure high-revenue deals for top-tier images and image-makers. In effect, he said with a practiced twinkle over cookies at a Sant Ambroeus corner table, “to make the world a prettier place.”Mr. Moneypenny is the president and chief executive of Trunk Archive, a photography licensing agency, whose back catalog of images run in magazines and product packaging, are loaded as smartphone backdrops and hang on hotel walls. In Trunk’s trunk are images by hundreds of photographers, including many of fashion’s marquee names: Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, Arthur Elgort and Patrick Demarchelier.
Mr. Moneypenny has built Trunk into a digital, long-tail boutique of stylish imagery, making the photographers (and the company) significant amounts of money in the process. They are high-end images for high-end prices.
“If Corbis and Getty are Kmart and Walmart,” Mr. Moneypenny said, ticking off two of the larger stock-photo agencies, “we’re Bergdorf Goodman.”
Having made a success of reselling existing images, Mr. Moneypenny is now getting into the business of creating new ones.
Fueled by investment capital from Waddell & Reed, which has taken positions in companies like Richemont and LVMH, Mr. Moneypenny has spent the last two years quietly buying creative agencies. The result is Great Bowery, a group that will include Trunk Archive and 11 other assignment and licensing agencies under its umbrella.
Great Bowery is a mega-agency, one whose ambition is to rebalance the scales, empowering those who make fashion’s imagery — photographers, fashion stylists, hair and makeup artists and set designers — and checking, implicitly, the powerful and increasingly integrated luxury companies and media conglomerates that have traditionally commissioned their work.
He sees it as nothing less than the fashion analogue of the rise of the agency system in Hollywood, which unseated the film studios as the sole kingmakers and deal-brokers.
“If one can say three pillars were originally music, television and film, I would argue that fashion is now the fourth pillar,” Mr. Moneypenny said. “Twenty years ago, it was the socialite on the Upper East Side or the resident of Mayfair or Beverly Hills that was aware of what was coming down the Chanel or Dior runway. There’s so much more interest about the creativity that comes out of this world.” (...)
Most of the agencies now under the aegis of Great Bowery, like CLM, M.A.P, Management & Artists and Streeters, are unfamiliar to the public. So, too, are many of the artists they represent.
Their work is not. You have seen it in the glossy spreads of fashion magazines, the ad campaigns that precede them, the billboards and bus shelters luxury companies commandeer and the videos that run on their Instagram accounts and websites.
If they are not, on the whole, household names the way CAA clients like Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Madonna are, Mr. Moneypenny is betting that they can be. Their rates can already run Hollywood stratospheric (“It’s not unusual for a highly talented artist in our world to generate a seven-figure annual income,” he said), and their visibility is rising to match. Is Pat McGrath, the most in-demand of the runway makeup artists, say, primed to become a name-brand megastar?
“Some designers are big famous stars,” Mr. Baron said. “Also photographers are, and stylists are, and models are. Everybody’s kind of important. It’s become popular culture.”
by Matthew Schneier, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Damon Winter/The New York Times
