TWIGGY ARRIVED
Within a few months, Twiggy arrived at the new offices at 216 Fulham Road. She sat cross-legged on the carpet whilst Peter worked on a layout of some sensational Barry Lategan photographs.
Agents in those days had no interest in either contributing to the ‘look' of the publicity material the girls brought in, or financing it. In fact, those early days were a nightmare of bouncing cheques for the young entrepreneurs of the fashion business, and many went under because of it.
By 1967 Peter Marlowe & Associates had a competitor called Sebastian Sed. The composites of the 60's were all printed to an A4 size on paper stock and ranged from a single sheet in black and white to a 24 page booklet in colour, depending on how the model felt about her own promotion. There were some girls who each year would spend nearly the price of a mini car to produce their 32 page colour composite, and wouldn't hear of anything less.
By 1968 Peter had created the first ever ‘Model Book' for the Jean Bell Agency and the first ever ‘Head-Sheet' for the Gavin Robinson Agency. The other Agencies followed in the same competitive spirit, so that by 1970 Marlowe's were producing Headsheets, Agency Books and model's composites for all the major agencies in Europe.
BEST CLIENT LIST
"Being the first to invent model promotion gave me an incredible advantage," recalls Peter Marlowe. "Firstly, I had the best client list - that meant I had all the top agents and models who could afford to pay the price for top quality work. I have never tried to cut corners on quality and I was happy to work 7 days a week for the first 12 years to develop my business."
Always creative, Peter Marlowe published the first London Agency Book for A.L.M.A., The Association of London Model Agencies. This was a leather bound book of the top 8 London agents and their 490 models including Jill Hammond, Jill Kennington and Jean Shrimpton, which was produced in 1968.
Other agencies such as Penny's still preferred to be independent and she had Marlowe's publish her book every year bound in suede.
