On Valente Fanning, V Management

Where does V Management fit into the agency world of New York?

You do not have to look for long before realising its far-reaching talent pool, eccentric style, and fixed ethic set it apart from the pack. When it comes to mother agencies, V Management’s CEO, Valente Fanning, has done the yards and made a quality run since the agency's conception in 2014.  

Growing up in Washington-Wilkes, Georgia, Fanning lived two hours out of Atlanta and what felt like an aeon from New York City. His hometown did not facilitate a move towards the industry. In High School, he not only had boundless passion and confidence that lent him the trust of his peers. He felt most confident when he was the basketball cheerleader manager, “the role involved me choreographing the halftime routine, and I love to dance and perform, but the creativity came out when I lived through them, working with them”.  As a teenager, seeping under his skin was a sense of direction: one to help, grow talent, and direct.

This was a place where grits were served, and Giorgio Armani's billboards did not exist. Except they kind of did…

As with most things that run under the surface, this passion stayed on the inside, occasionally surfacing as he passed from college to fashion show, to corporate job, and then, all of a sudden, New York.  While studying Communications at Perimeter College at Georgia State University, he fell in love with public relations. He soon had his own small PR business, Fanning PR.  The agency helped coordinate a fashion show and party for young, emerging models and designers from Atlanta. In the lead-up, Fanning (arranging the project for the client) was mistaken for a model and asked to walk… multiple times. He had to learn how to walk as the show was rapidly approaching, “I was doing PR, and the next thing I know, I am modelling”.  He was scouted by Demanti St Claire (founder of St. Claire Models), who became his mother agent.  At 19, Fanning left his job and apartment as a model to live in New York. He searched for agencies, walking between couches and shelters to audition alongside a humongous suitcase, dragging his life up subway steps where his sweat-drenched clothes were turned down.

He returned to his hometown in August 2012 (a year later). (Begrudgingly.)

While he was back home, he was depressed and unfulfilled. But he began pushing back and started the Diamond In The Rough initiative, where he developed two cheerleader friends for a pageant. Then, he bought a book. He watched a TV show —  A second edition of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being a Model by Roshumba Williams and The Agency, produced for VH1 in 2007. And he tried again.  But not as a model.

Fanning returned to New York with two BIG binders (for IMG and Wilhelmina), a head full of Roshumba’s book, and high aspirations from The Agency.  And he got Wilhelmina.  While interning with Roman Young and Bobby Guiterrez, Fanning worked the afternoon shift at the front desk of Crunch Fitness at Union Square. He stood out, dressing casually “and soaking it up like a sponge” until he ran to the gym for work at 4p.m. to make rent. (This was still New York.) Later, he worked at Macy’s, walking around and scouting during his lunch break, selling his personality with the hope that he’d get a chance to prove himself. “I was selling my essence, but I had no track record, no website, no Instagram… when I’d talk to the parents, they saw my intentions, and 9/10 times they were open to listening to me.” He was learning everything from scratch. It was like his first task at Wilhelmina, prepping a hundred t-shirts as show packages with the “just figure it out” guidance interns often receive.

Fanning did not run into his first model, Devon White (who “looked like a young Heidi Slimane”) until a Target First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum. After signing (and getting him a haircut and some clothes), White’s first booking ended up being a Yves Saint Laurent worldwide exclusive campaign, and Fanning progressed into the role of a mother agent.  After Wilhelmina and Macy’s, Fanning went to a smaller agency, working with new faces as an assistant. He would handle the models’ apartments, coordinating with mother agents and teaching talent how to walk. Fanning oversaw talent (as the scouting director was away). He noticed nobody paid this one model any attention; she had been flown in from Jamaica for test images, and her sculpted, slender form, exquisite facial features and deep, dark skin went utterly unseen. Fanning begged the agency to keep her in New York for Fashion Week. He organised photographers and stayed up late after work to help her walk, and when they got back, the agents took her in. Her name was Kai Newman, and she flew through all the top shows (Tommy Hilfiger, Coach and Marc Jacobs, to name a few) and became a highlight of the week. Her fierce walk and head-turning composure won over eyes and showed Fanning he could do more than refer. He could launch. 

So, he did. 

Fine-tuning his business into inspired action, V Management now develops models on various skills beyond the industry's communication, diet and movement disciplines. In doing so, V Management organically grew alongside Fanning. As he merged his Southern-born tenderness with professionalism, he was compelled to treat talent as more than a product. Humanizing and instilling imagination into his talent, Fanning worked on the side of spiritual development. The need to follow specific rules is uncompromising. Still, it does leave room for the agent to mould their model, emphasizing overall wellness and growth.

“They need to grow and have a human experience to leverage their image with their mind”.

The success of a model is more holistic than previously thought, and mother agents are tasked with promoting the overall success of the talent as a person.

Agents like Fanning push this as the bottom line and find that talent with personality are more approachable, likeable and likely to get booked. You need to make the model a charismatic entity.  There needs to be “a sparkle in the eye…the client needs to feel something: their essence”, says Fanning, who requires an emotional vibration to move beyond the realm of the aesthetic. 

There is a need for a unique essence that resonates with the client and inspires them, “I look for them to be already human, and then I try to see the brands they could be working with…I imagine them on the billboards and the magazines and push them to be the highest version of themselves”.  

This is vital in the industry, especially with the swarming talent that pools into New York.  Finding ‘real people’ is one step in the lengthy process of innovating an individual, of cultivating a real model. The modelling world is like a talent show: it is the ability to market oneself and one’s skills, separating the gradient between good and great. Without keeping it exciting and inclusive, there is unlikely to be any advancement in productivity.  In the ever-rotating world, digis still need updates, hair needs to be shifted, and models and agencies must keep up with the times. 

Although Fanning grew up in a small town in Georgia, his operation as an agent in New York is impressive. This came when there were hardly any successful agents or models of colour. There was hardly any diversity,  “no Hispanics, Asians, and especially black people … you had to be exceptional if you wanted to make it back then… and that was still going on in 2009”. In his early days as an agent, he felt like he was in a “David and Goliath scenario” with the colossal clients and gargantuan agencies that hold sway in the commercial sphere.  However, this has not demoralised Fanning, who pushes to this day for more inclusivity and a greater reflection of New York as what it is: a melting pot of faces, races and sizes that is just as diverse as fashion needs to be.

The business structure of a mother agent is easy to understand and often overlooked.  Put simply: “We don’t get paid until they get paid”. Usually, taking in 10-20% of the job and acting as the go-between with the client and the model, mother agents are often faced with ‘chasing up the cash’, especially when clients operate with Net 30 or Net 90 payment terms. Fanning reassures his models by forwarding remittance schedules after receiving them and fights for them when problems occur. For example, when a model has not worked in months and goes to a mother agent to leave their agency.  Since mother agents mediate between agencies and the model, they have to ask their talent to be removed from the agency, which can sometimes raise more concerns than eyebrows.  “You can lose friends when you have to shift people around…it can be stressful and hard to be the bad guy telling agencies the model is leaving — sometimes they come after you”. Mother agents want the best for their talent, but dealing with the constant responsibility can be draining. Still, Fanning is fighting for his models.  For instance, he attempts to curtail the Net 30 dilemma — which only began because transactions were not always automated — by working with clients with an organised payment structure.

“I like working with Amiri, Coach and Telfar. I’m working with them all right now because they get it, pay immediately, and sometimes even chase me to invoice them”.

This responsibility shows hope for the industry. It demonstrates that some individuals and businesses want to improve things and leave the industry in a better place than they found.

Such responsibilities are held between the professional and emotional realms like a fragile fruit in a hurricane of media, press gifts and gorgeous humans. Release emails drop like flies into inboxes after buzzing around a pool of requests, call sheets and badgering photographers offering test shoots.  Behind the screen, this mother agent is pressing for changes, and he is planning to grow even more.  In the second year hosting his internship program, Fanning can structure his business to accommodate time for himself to scout internationally and balance his workload further. Even with transferring his talent, Fanning is more competent and confident than ever. When moving Malik Anderson from his first agency, he was asked, ‘Why would you do that for a guy that will last two seasons?’.  Today, Malik is one of the Top 50 Models in the world and was nominated for models.com’s Model of the Year in 2022.   “That’s why I do it.”  With Fanning’s dedication and workload, it is no surprise that New York has held him for so long.  However, he hopes to explore the world, build up more aspiring models and diversify the talent pool. “I remember seeing Kai Newman step onto the Marc Jacobs runway, and it ran over me like a breath of fresh air…That’s why I do it.”

He has spent 20 years in the business. He has grown up with it, alongside it, and, at times, battled with it. The modelling business and fashion industry love to be the wind in the sail of the world, its subjects held in the rough wake of competing ideals and subject to its blowing contingencies of culture and trend. In the stern wake of this world, mother agencies like V-Management and Valente Fanning provide accessibility, safety and direction for talent, keeping them afloat, making them happy and getting them work to live at their best.  

That’s why he does it.