A female executive at the top of the modelling industry had a close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and introduced him to women on the agency’s books, a Guardian investigation has found.
Until last November, Faith Kates ran Next Management modelling and talent agency, which has represented the likes of Alexa Chung, Milla Jovovich and Billie Eilish, a position she held for decades as the founder of the business. She stepped down quietly just weeks before the first major Epstein files were released, saying she intended to focus on charity work.
Links between Kates and the late sex offender have previously been reported, but analysis of documents published by the US Department of Justice reveals a much deeper relationship than previously known, with emails showing Kates secretly took business advice from Epstein and discussed multimillion-dollar loans.
Kates appears to have met Epstein regularly, including on one occasion with the then Prince Andrew at a New York department store in December 2010, the week of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s now infamous visit to the city to supposedly call off his friendship with the financier.
Kates, 68, offered her support and “unconditional” friendship after Epstein was first convicted for soliciting a child for prostitution in 2009. She was still sending friendly emails weeks before he was arrested again in 2019.
More troubling is that across their nearly 40-year relationship it seems Kates connected a number of her models with Epstein, raising serious questions for the woman who has been responsible for the careers – and ultimately the welfare – of thousands of young women. There is no evidence to suggest Kates was aware of Epstein’s offending prior to his 2009 conviction.
The revelations prompted Next, which until now has not commented on its founder’s relationship with the sex offender, to thoroughly distance itself from her. In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson said the company was working to end all legal ties with Kates and that her relationship with Epstein “was completely and absolutely unknown to Next management and its top executives”.
A spokesperson for Kates said she had “never put a model in harm’s way by sending them to inappropriate go-sees or meetings”, adding: “Epstein was a master manipulator. People around him knew only what he wanted them to know.”
‘I will always be your friend’
There are more than 5,000 mentions of Kates in the files. Although some are duplicates, the emails between the two are frequent. The messages are often effusive in tone, with Kates regularly telling Epstein how good a friend he was, at one point telling him: “I really do love you like a brother.”
One of the first emails in the files was sent while Epstein was in prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Kates wrote:
18 July 2009 10.18am
I am and will always be your friend…Unconditionally…will always be there for you.
Хохо
Then, soon after his release, she repeated these sentiments.
5 September 2009 7.47pm
Thinking of you a lot and hoping you are finally enjoying some please [sic] and quiet..know you are always in my thoughts and prayers. You are a good friend my dear friend..
Love ya
xoxo
Epstein responded:
5 September 2009 7.54pm
thanks,, lets get back to work.
Epstein’s interest in the modelling industry is demonstrated in the discussions between the two, and his diary shows him scheduled to meet Kates several times at the company’s New York offices during the 2010s.
Kates began connecting Epstein to Next models years earlier, according to interviews. By the 1990s the industry had developed a practice of introducing models to businessmen unconnected to the fashion world. Kates was particularly adept at this and held her own agency dinners at which wealthy men would mix with young women on her books.
It was at one such dinner, organised by Kates in 1992, that Stacey Williams remembered being introduced to Epstein. Williams, then one of Next’s top models, said that about three months later she was taken by Kates to a party hosted by Donald Trump at the Plaza hotel, where she met Epstein again.
Williams went on to have a relationship with Epstein. She said it was consensual but that “some of the events that took place within the confines of that relationship were not”, including when she alleged she was groped by Trump in what she believed was part of a “twisted game” between the two men. The president has denied the allegations.
More than a decade later, Kates allegedly arranged for another of her top models, Barbara Stoyanoff, to meet Epstein. Stoyanoff was already working for Victoria’s Secret as a lingerie model but her dream was to become a Victoria’s Secret Angel, one of the official faces of the company.
Stoyanoff told the Guardian that Kates suggested Epstein could help and that she later met him at Next’s offices in New York. “He told me to stand up … and hoik my dress up to see my legs, then he asked me to lift my dress from behind to see how my butt was,” she said.
Barbara Stoyanoff’s Next composite card.
At the time, she said, she thought nothing of the request; it was normal for a lingerie brand to want to see a model’s body. Years later, when she saw Epstein in news coverage, she felt “disgusted”. A spokesperson for Kates said the meeting never happened and added: “Her supposed interview with Epstein … in the middle of Next’s glass-enclosed offices is not credible on its face.”
Over the years that followed, Stoyanoff, who was signed to Next for about 15 years, said she saw Epstein with Kates numerous times at their offices.
In around May 2004, Kates allegedly sent the former Next model Sena Cech, then 20, to Epstein’s New York home to ask if he would help her travel to fashion shoots in his private jet. Cech remembered: “She wrote his address on a yellow Post-it note.”
After Cech arrived, she said, he asked to look at her hands. She recalled that he then said: “Ulgh, your nails are so dirty, you’re not the kind of girl we take on the jet.” She said she left in tears and it wasn’t until years later that she realised the man who had insulted her was Epstein. “It was like a brick in my stomach realising I dodged a bullet,” she said.
Sara Ziff, a former Next model who now runs Model Alliance, which campaigns against systemic sexual abuse in the fashion industry, wasn’t sent to Epstein by Kates. However, she said she believed Kates or someone else at the agency gave him her home address in 2000 or 2001, when she was 18 or 19.
She had previously been introduced to Epstein by a fellow model, and recalled him taking an interest in her schooling. Later, she received a letter from him that said: “Sara, there are great writing courses at the New School … my treat.” Ziff said she believed Epstein was offering to pay for her education at this New York school. She did not take him up on the offer, later earning degrees from Harvard and Columbia.
The letter from Epstein to Sara Ziff. Photograph: Supplied
“I know that the model who invited me to meet Epstein did not have my address,” Ziff told the Guardian. “I do know that Next had that address on file.”
None of the models the Guardian interviewed alleged they were abused by Epstein.
A Next spokesperson said it “at all times conducted its operations with integrity and with the highest regard for the safety of our models”.
‘Aspiring actresses’ for dinner with Woody Allen
Emails in the DoJ files suggest that Kates continued to connect models to Epstein during the 2010s, even after his first prison sentence, and that she would meet women at Epstein’s request or connect them to other agents.
In 2011, Epstein emailed Kates a numbered list of three women’s names. A few hours later, Kates responded:
7 February 2011 9.18pm
I can get 2 that’s what you asked me for stand by.
The same year Epstein appears to ask his assistant to get “names of girls” from Kates for a gala event, and he emailed Kates asking if she had “any aspiring actresses” for a dinner with the Hollywood director Woody Allen.
In 2017, they discussed a former Next model who is now an established internet personality. Kates described her as “stunning” and sent him her bust, height and weight measurements, along with what appears to be a number of photographs of her, which are redacted in the files.
The same year, they discussed another model, who did not realise her name was in the files until she was contacted by the Guardian. The model, who is still represented by Next and did not want to be named, said: “I felt shocked and grossed out, like: why is the biggest predator of our time typing out my name, what was this for?”
Even as women started to go public with disturbing allegations against Epstein, Kates continued to offer her support. She appeared to tell him that women coming forward with allegations about him were doing so only to sell their stories to the press. “Money motivates people,” she wrote. Later, in response to another abuse allegation against Epstein, she told him: “She should be so lucky people are nuts.”
After extensive coverage of Virginia Giuffre’s allegations in 2011, she advised him to “lay very low” and donate to projects that would “do good for others”. “This will make people talk about you but in a positive way,” she wrote.
The same year, Epstein appears to have donated $50,000 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, of which Kates was president, and gave Kates a Prada handbag for her birthday. She emailed thanking him for the bag and for “being my friend!!!!”, signed with her signature line of kisses. The following year he gave her a $12,000 stove for Christmas.
Faith Kates and Milla Jovovich, a supermodel previously represented by Kates, at a gala hosted by the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund and L’Oréal in New York in 2004. Jovovich has no known connection to Epstein. Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage
It was around the same time that Epstein’s offers of significant investments appear to have begun. In July 2010, he emailed her about buying a $5m property together, for her and her family. Kates’ spokesperson insisted that no investments from Epstein had ever materialised, and the Guardian has seen no evidence to suggest she received any loans.
In emails from September 2010 and across the following five months, Kates seemed desperate for the purchase to go ahead. She wrote:
17 September 2010 3.24pm
Are you avoiding me this is what I didn’t want to happen…I need to talk to u today as I don’t want to loose this apt it is perfect for me and my family…and my kids are excited!!!
Хохо
Epstein wrote:
27 September 2010 10.33am
in paris, do not tell the broker how high you are willilng to go. it willcost an xtra halfmillion if we are not careful [sic]
Kates wrote:
2 November 2010 3.42pm
I cant loose [sic] this not for me for my kids.
Three months later, she wrote:
20 February 2011 5.15pm
jeffrey please be upfront with me I understand that if you cant do this finically at this moment but pleas just return my calls I wont ever let something like this come between 30 years of friendship .
Хохо
Advice and a secret loan offer
Beginning in 2015, Kates appears to have accepted guidance from Epstein about the modelling agency, and over the next three years he and sometimes his accountant Richard Kahn seem to have acted as advisers.
Emails suggest Epstein directed Kates on how to buy out Next’s then co-owners, the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital. He offered her a $6m loan to do so, which he told her must be kept secret. He wrote:
25 February 2015 11.32am
I will lend you , you only , the 6 million. offer to buy golden gate out for 5 to start. . my name cannot be involved. of course.
Two years later, Epstein continued to act as an adviser to Kates behind the scenes on how to make the deal happen. He appeared to send her a script of what to say to Neale Attenborough, the managing director of Golden Gate. In another email, Epstein says: “Let’s get rid of Neil [sic].”
A spokesperson for Golden Gate said: “Jeffrey Epstein’s identity and advisory role were proactively concealed from the Golden Gate Capital team throughout the sale process.”
A spokesperson for Kates said none of the loans suggested by Epstein materialised and “Epstein never had a financial interest in Next”.
In the months after Epstein killed himself in prison, in August 2019, Next bought out Golden Gate as planned. A spokesperson for Next said the final deal happened without Kahn’s involvement.
“Ms Kates’ longstanding and highly personal relationship with Epstein were unknown to Next Management until recent disclosures of the Epstein documents,” the spokesperson said. “Her actions were neither authorised by nor known to Next, and were at all times her own.”
The spokesperson added: “To the extent Ms Kates’ independent actions impacted or involved Next clients and employees, we are deeply sorry.”