It’s just 9 a.m. but the subways and downtown sidewalks are already dotted with slender models heading for coffee, juice, or to an early hair and makeup call time. Perhaps it’s Creatures of the Wind at Chelsea’s Pace Gallery, or Richard Chai Love at Lincoln Center.
The Smile, a cafe with a reputation for good-looking clientele, and the NoHo block of Bond St between Bowery and Lafayette that it sits on, is entertaining a fashionable breakfast crowd. Inside, customers sip Plowshare espresso; outside, street-style photographers begin to linger.
It’s the second day of New York Fashion Week and the offices of modeling agency One Management, where I’ve come to meet its founder, Scott Lipps, are already buzzing a few doors down at 42 Bond.
Yesterday, the New York Times opined the question, “Is Fashion Week Near the End of The Runway?” Today though, they’re lauding the quirks of it-girl models, and featuring a photo – front and center – of One Management’s rainbow-haired Chloe Norgaard. Scott holds a copy of the paper, and as I shake his hand he beams like a proud parent.
For the last 12 years Scott’s been running One Management, the agency he founded after stints at Next and Karin, and a move from Los Angeles back to his home state of New York. “It’s sort of like dog years in fashion,” he explains, “so 12 times 7, that’s about a hundred or something like that, roughly. I’ve had it for maybe a hundred years.”
One launched with a supermodel reputation, repping the likes of Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen and Iman. Now there’s One, “the high fashion division,” ONE.1, “which is more about Victoria’s Secret, Sports Illustrated,” a music division to “manage bands and... do branding... a celebrity PR division... a men’s division.”
“[During Fashion Week] I sleep with a BlackBerry next to my head,” says Lipps. “So from about two in the morning to about seven in the morning, every half an hour or so I’m looking at it, waiting for some email to come in about an exclusive for a girl in Europe, or someone not getting the girl they wanted for a show. There’s a lot we do here, it’s a lot of hard work, hence why I don’t sleep at night.”
Like most serial entrepreneurs, Scott’s a busy man getting busier. The current iteration of his life, at an intersection of fashion, celebrity, and music is “a lot of drama,” but it isn’t new. “It’s what I know it to be after doing 20 years.”
At One’s 10 year anniversary party Scott was able to add Professional Musician back to his job title after joining Courtney Love on stage to play drums with her band Hole during the party’s performance. In the 1980s Scott was the drummer in Los Angeles hair metal band Black Cherry. “It went really well,” Scott recalls, “and I’ve kind of been in the band ever since.” A mutually beneficial performance, Courtney is now repped under One’s celebrity division.
His life, a sequence of varied events each in its own category of glamor, Scott seems the type of person to have been predisposed for social media fame. “Last night I had five events to go to,” Scott tells me. “Tonight I have six.” In 2010 when Tumblr moved his photo blog, Pop Lipps, to its list of fashion blogs to follow alongside the likes of Terry Richardson’s Diary, Vogue, and W magazine he developed a following some several hundred thousand strong.
“[Nowadays] you are your brand. You become your brand, you help your brand. It’s all interchangeable, and ultimately... the more stuff that raises the visibility of myself, people know that it’s synonymous with the company.”
On October 1st “Pop Lipps,” with a portrait of quirky it-girl Chloe on the cover and a forward by Ms. Love, will hit the shelves in book form. A collection of Scott’s photographs with “only four pages of writing,” the book is “for anyone who likes pop culture — especially fashion and New York life and music and entertainment because,” says Lipps, “that’s essentially what I think my life is.”
SCOTT LIPPS | poplipps.com
PHOTOS: MEGHAN MCGARRY | WORDS: KELLY SHERMAN
