For Ali Kavoussi, Fashion Week has never really been about the front row.
As founder and managing partner of The Lions Management, the New York-based agency launched in 2014 with an approach that looked beyond traditional model bookings, Kavoussi has spent decades discovering, developing and guiding some of fashion’s most recognizable faces. Today, The Lions represents talent including Candice Swanepoel, Behati Prinsloo, Stella Maxwell and Amelia Gray, but Kavoussi’s own Fashion Week story began long before the agency existed.
It goes back to 1997, when his best friend from high school, Taylor Foster, booked a Prada exclusive.
“That was really the seed that brought me into this world and ultimately led me to do what I do today,” Kavoussi says. “So that moment will always mean something very different to me.”
By 1998 or 1999, Kavoussi had moved to New York and was sent to chaperone Caroline de Maigret to a Marc Jacobs show. More than 25 years later, he still remembers the backstage.
“It was legendary,” he says. “There was something so incredibly cool about that period that simply doesn’t exist in the same way anymore. It was the definition of major — a real moment in time.”
It was the era of Alexander McQueen, John Galliano at Dior, Versace and Thierry Mugler, when the runway could be as much theater as fashion and the right show could create a star.
“The ’90s and early 2000s were my time,” Kavoussi says. “There was an energy, fantasy and sense of spectacle around fashion then that was extraordinary. Those shows could create icons.”
The industry has changed considerably since then, but Kavoussi still believes in the power of the right booking to alter the trajectory of a career. He saw it happen with Irina Shayk after introducing her to Carine Roitfeld. Roitfeld subsequently introduced Shayk to Riccardo Tisci, leading to her first Givenchy runway appearance.
“That was a real turning point,” he says, “and one of those moments when you could feel a career shifting.”
Today, those decisions are highly strategic. “There is no single formula, and what works for one model may be completely wrong for another,” Kavoussi says. “We curate the approach individually around the model, where she is in her career and where we believe she should go next.”
That individualized approach is also central to The Lions, which was created around a more holistic model of talent management, developing careers and personal brands rather than simply filling a booking calendar.
And managing the person behind the career is another skill entirely.
“You basically need a PhD in psychology,” Kavoussi says, laughing. “Trust happens over time. It comes from experience, consistency and being there through both the highs and the lows.”
For all that has changed since that first Prada booking in 1997, what keeps him interested is remarkably similar.
“I think what excites me most — and probably always will — is the underdog,” he says. “The girl everyone said no to, or the comeback of an older model who has been away and everyone has counted out.”
And more than two decades later, Kavoussi is still waiting for the next one.
“I will always love discovering and launching new talent,” he says. “There’s nothing quite like watching someone’s career begin.”
