John Casablancas

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John Casablancas (born December 22, 1942) is a successful entrepreneur who founded the Elite Model agency in Paris, France, in 1972. He also founded the world's largest modeling school, the John Casablancas Modeling and Career Centers in 1987.

He was born in Manhattan, New York, to Catalonian parents from Sabadell, Spain, and grew up in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. He was educated mainly in Switzerland. John Casablancas is the father of The Strokes singer Julian Casablancas and fashion designer Cecile Casablancas.

Casablancas worked in a variety of jobs including managing the marketing division of the Coca-Cola franchise in the northeastern part of Brazil. He opened his first modeling agency in Paris, France, and two years later created Elite Model Management.

He reportedly left Elite Modeling in 2000, a short time after being indirectly implicated in a BBC documentary which highlighted underage sex between young models and senior executives at Elite Modeling. Two other senior Elite executives, Gérald Marie and Xavier Moreau, were directly implicated in the documentary. Casablancas did not deny that he had slept with teenage models, but maintained that he never knowingly had sex with a girl under age 16.

He now heads the John Casablancas modeling and career centers, a modeling and acting school, which has franchises in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Italy, and Indonesia, as well as in the United States -- in Florida, New York, New Mexico, Washington, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California and Arizona. As owner of this company, he states the advantages of the contacts he made while heading Elite Modeling agency to lure potential students to his classes.