Organisers of a Scottish fashion event have been accused of failing to pay their bills and leaving a trail of debt behind them.
Glasgow Fashion Week, launched in March, has still not paid models who took part in the inaugural show, according to one of the agencies that supplied them. Despite this, the organisation has started negotiations over a second event to run next year, Scottie Brannan, head of Superior Model Management, said.
The company is now taking legal advice over recovering bills worth "thousands of pounds".
"The fact they think they can then talk about putting the event on in the future seems crazy. This is a very tightly knit industry," he said.
Among those who had been left short, it is claimed, were students who had modelled for the show - which ran over four days in George Square and involved two award-winning Scottish designers and 32 high-street brands.
Those who took part in the fashion show included Jaeger, Topshop and French Connection. Another company that had filmed the catwalk displays was also still owed money, it was claimed.
When contacted by The Herald yesterday, Yemi Adegite, a Nigerian IT consultant who set up Glasgow Fashion Week, admitted there had been cashflow problems due to the event running at a loss. "We haven't made money and have incurred debt along the way. We have reached agreement with different creditors and some have been repaid. One or two have not," he said.
Mr Adegite said the firm originally faced £60,000 of debt but had now cleared 70% and hoped to repay the rest by the end of the year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article