One Management founder Scott Lipps has set his sights on Los Angeles, having relocated to the West Coast to open a new company called Lipps.
Lipps, who has kept a stake in One Management, has been staffing up the digitally focused agency, which will represent models, celebrities and influencers and offer brand consulting and content development.
Describing the initiative as a hybrid company, Lipps said the talent list consists of 25 people. He also has been staffing up his own team, which will have office space in the Dream Hotel in Los Angeles. His new recruits include Anahid Krile, who spent the last 17 years as director of L.A. Models, and one of her former colleagues Monna Lee, who is now Krile’s second-in-command at Lipps L.A. Mike Eland, former director of scouting at Wilhelmina Models, is also new to the team. Steven Baillie is on board as creative director.
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“If you look at the fashion business now as opposed to when I started One almost 16 years ago, it’s shifted in incredible ways. It’s really important to me to do something that is an agency for the future,” he said. “A lot of the talent agencies in L.A. like CAA do a lot of packaging where they package television shows and producers and writers, where it’s almost like a 360-degree kind of company. So the idea is we’re going to have creatives and influencers under our umbrella to be able to create content for brands and also to be able to make sure that content gets distributed in a way where we’re working with people who are at the stage where they can get the word out there hopefully in a viral manner by using our talent pool. I don’t really see companies in this space who have done that.”
Inspired partially by Tommy Hilfiger’s carnival-themed fashion show in Los Angeles, the rise of local “brand-able, bankable models” such as Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner and the city’s celebrity culture and digital leanings, Lipps said the timing seemed right, especially since the business is becoming increasingly steered by all things digital.
With One Management, Lipps helped to build an agency that represents a bevy of bold face names such as A$AP Rocky, Janelle Monáe, Iman, Gucci Mane, Young Thug, Courtney Love, The Chainsmokers and Steve Aoki. In term of models, One Management lists Karolína Kurková, Helena Christensen, Bar Refaeli, Chloe Norgaard and Vanessa Breuer among its representatives. Always on the lookout for new talent, three years ago Lipps approached Josh Ostrovsky, known as The Fat Jewish, in a hydration tent at Burning Man and told him he looked like a beautiful adult bearded baby.