Brands are now blacklisting Terry Richardson over sexual misconduct claims

On Monday 23 October, The Daily Telegraph reported an email was circulated among senior management at Condé Nast International — which is responsible for publishing magazines including Vogue, Glamour, GQ and Vanity Fair — by executive vice president and COO James Woolhouse announcing that the publishing house would no longer work with the photographer on the basis of reported sexual assault. Any work already commissioned by the photographer but not yet published should be “killed or substituted with other material”, the email stated.

In addition, Conde Nast US told the NME in a statement: “Condé Nast has nothing planned with him going forward. Sexual harassment of any kind is unacceptable and should not be tolerated.”

Since then, models and editors have been speaking out about instances of Terry Richardson’s sexual impropriety. Justine Picardie, editor in chief at Harper’s Bazaar told Radio 4’s Today Programme that she decided not to work with the photographer when she joined the magazine in 2013. “A colleague of mine, when she had been much younger and working on a different magazine, had gone to his studio and there was explicit pornography playing on a screen beside her and there were pornographic images on the walls and she had felt that there was something very troubling going on in that environment,” she said.

“I had only once been in his studio and again I was much younger, a long time before I was editor of Harper’s Bazaar, but again I felt troubled by the explicit imagery that was on the walls.”

“When I said I didn’t like it and I found it troubling there was a sense you might be part of a witch hunt. Witch hunt is a phrase Terry Richardson has used,” Justine added.

“Adults have to take some responsibility for what’s going on in their industry. It’s right to say to young girls this is probably not a good situation for you to be in, I would also say the same to boys. You need to be cautious and we need to protect them from exploitative situations.”

Now, Italian fashion house Valentino, which Terry Richardson has worked for in the past shooting campaigns, has announced that it will not be working with the photographer in the near future. “The last campaign with photographer Terry Richardson was shot in July 2017 – there are no plans for a future campaign and we of course take these allegations seriously.”

Bulgari has also announced it has “no plans to work with him again.”

A spokesperson for Terry Richardson told The Telegraph: “He is an artist who has been known for his sexually explicit work so many of his professional interactions with subjects were sexual and explicit in nature but all of the subjects of his work participated consensually.”

As far back as 2014, Terry Richardson was accused of inappropriate behaviour by models including Rie Rasmussen, Jamie Peck, Charlotte Waters and Anna del Gaizo.