Ellos – one of the largest e-commerce and mail-order retailers of fashion, home and interior in Northern Europe, is launching a new campaign – Faces of Ellos and they are encouraging their customers to apply. The campaign is to highlight their new communications platform Made by Women and to execute this they have teamed up with Swedish model agency Icons Agency.
“Ellos wants to encourage body positivity and diversity so that everyone feels represented on our platform. With Icons Agency we can take one step further to portray an even more diverse image of the fantastic female body” says Anna Westlund, creative director at Ellos.
Icons Agency is a Stockholm-based modeling agency founded in 2019. On their website you can read:
“We who run ICONS. AGENCY are Sanna Johannesson and Chrystelle Eriksberger. We both have worked in and around the industry for several years and had to endure and witness racism and sexism in our workplaces. When we created this together we want it to function as a refuge for models where they can feel safe, respected and included.”
“We focus mainly on people of color, but we exclude no one regardless of hairstyle, skin color or size. We want to create an innovational thinking in the industry where the unique diversity in Sweden is taken advantage of and no one is left out regardless of ethnicity. Today, we represents about seventy models with varying experience but they are beautiful, strong and ready to make a difference.”
“There is around ten major modeling agencies around cross the country and common amongst them all is the lack of representation of people of color. When we then dug deeper into this matter, it became increasingly clear that the lack of models with an ethnicity other than Swedish was not due to the lack of people with foreign roots. This is rather because they have not been included in the modeling industry on the same terms as whites and among those who have succeeded despite the unfair conditions, many had to endure racism in their workplace. From this insight, the idea for Icons Agency was born.”
So – this month Ellos and Icons are starting their model search via Ellos homepage – and the great news is: all women can apply! So, what are you guys waiting for?
