Insider Feature: The Met Gala - The Inside Truth

Demna just spent a reported ten million dollars turning Times Square into one enormous Gucci hallucination, fifty screens running fake adverts for Gucci chocolate, Gucci pets, even a Gucci hotel that doesn’t exist. The spectacle was clever and the ads were genuinely fun. The problem, for me, was everything that came down the runway underneath all of it.In this episode I get into Demna’s GucciCore and why I think it missed. I talk about a collection that felt like a bit of Tom Ford, a bit of the Frida Giannini years and a bit of his own Balenciaga, all stitched together without doing full justice to any of them, and why being compared to Tom Ford is not the compliment people think it is. I get into the business reality too, the declining sales, the pressure on the house, and why eyeballs are the bare minimum when you have this kind of budget. I also ask the bigger questions. Can Demna actually save Gucci, what do the next collections need to say, and why does fashion keep recycling the same handful of names while so many brilliant designers, especially women, never get a shot at the top.This is my take and only my take, so if you watched the same show and loved it, I want to hear from you as much as I want to hear from those who agree with me and didn’t like it. Fashion is a conversation, there is no universal right or wrong, and the disagreement is the whole point.You can find me on Instagram @nakullaxYou can email the show at [email protected]

Lesa Amoore had multiple Vogue covers. She walked for Armani, Versace and the biggest luxury houses in the world. She worked across Milan, Madrid, Munich, Paris and New York during one of the most iconic eras in fashion history.But Lesa’s story goes far beyond the covers and the catwalks. She speaks openly about her experiences at Elite Paris under Gérald Marie, the unwanted advances she had to fight off alone, and being pressured into a cosmetic procedure she never asked for.She talks about witnessing things on a yacht in Monte Carlo connected to Prince Andrew, and finding herself in the same circles as Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. She also speaks about her advocacy work, her photography career, and everything she has learned from a life spent inside this industry.Lesa came into this conversation as a complete open book. Raw, honest and holding nothing back. She is one of the most intelligent, warm and inspiring women we have ever had on this show and we feel very privileged she trusted us with her story.Read More:2020 — Victims of Gérald Marie come forward (The Guardian)https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/nov/20/plain-sight-more-models-accuse-gerald-marie-sexual-assault-elite2021 — Models speak out against Gérald Marie (NYT)https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/style/models-harassment-gerald-marie.html2021 — Survivors invited to the French Senate (BBC)https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-585621492025 — The Fashion Workers Act signed into law (Vogue)https://www.vogue.com/article/the-fashion-workers-act-is-finally-law-what-happens-nowFollow LesaWebsite: www.lesaamoore.comInstagram: @lesaamooreThe Fashion InsiderInstagram: @nakullaxEmail: [email protected]​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Met Gala. The most talked about night in fashion, the most photographed steps in the world, and one of the most misunderstood events in modern culture.This episode we are pulling back the velvet rope and getting into what this event actually is, how it actually works, and why the version you see on your feed is only a fraction of the full story. We are talking $75,000 a ticket, a guest list controlled by one person, brands extracting over a billion dollars in a single evening, and a room full of the most powerful people in the world who cannot walk in their outfits or use their phones.From the Naomi Campbell and Anna Wintour feud that reportedly got a supermodel with 66 Vogue covers kept out of the room, to the Marilyn Monroe dress worn for four minutes and may have been permanently damaged, to Demi Lovato leaving straight to an AA meeting, to the unwritten rules that have ended careers and decades long relationships overnight, this episode has all of it. The insider stories, the psychology behind why even the world’s most powerful people lose themselves over a dinner invitation, the finances nobody talks about clearly enough, and the gap between the mythology of this event and the reality of what goes on inside.Follow Nakul on Instagram @nakullaxwww.instagram.com/nakullaxYou can email us at [email protected]

Every model needs an agent. That is not up for debate. But the agent sitting across from you could be the person who protects you from the worst this industry has to offer, or the person who quietly delivers you into it. In this episode Nakul goes into the full picture. The good, the bad, and the genuinely sinister. Because understanding both sides is what actually keeps you safe.We go into the scout system. The legendary scouts who changed lives with a single conversation. Kate Moss discovered at JFK Airport at fourteen, Gisele Bundchen spotted at a McDonald’s in São Paulo, Naomi Campbell approached in her school uniform in Covent Garden. And then Daniel Siad, named approximately two thousand times in the declassified Epstein files as a scout and recruiter of young women for Jeffrey Epstein’s network, who was sending girls from small villages in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Latvia directly into Epstein’s orbit. We also go into the promoter system. The nightclub circuit operating at the edges of fashion week in New York, Milan, Paris and London, how it works, who is behind it, and why it remains one of the primary access points for exploitation in the industry today.And we go into agents. The extraordinary ones who fight for you, educate you, and stand by you when things go wrong. And the ones who leave you out to dry the moment it costs them something. Nakul shares his own stories from both ends of that experience, plus the red flags and green flags every model needs to know before signing anything. Raw, honest, and from someone still inside the industry.Follow Nakul on Instagram @nakullaxwww.instagram.com/nakullaxEmail us at: [email protected]

For decades the fashion party scene was used to get close to young models. Dinners. Yacht parties. Private events. The most glamorous rooms in the world. And inside those rooms a system that has been operating in plain sight for longer than most people in this industry want to admit.This is how it works. It starts with an invitation. You are made to feel chosen. Special. Like the industry has finally noticed you. Then comes the offer. Money to bring your model friends along. Easy cash. A fun evening. And the moment you say yes they begin to own you.Psychologists call it the foot in the door technique. You agree to something small. Each yes makes the next ask feel normal. Each step leads somewhere you never consciously agreed to go. The debt keeps you in place. Accommodation. Portfolio. Travel. Agency commission. All accumulating before you earn a single pound. You owe money to the very people exploiting you. Leaving feels impossible.Jean-Luc Brunel ran Karin Models and later MC2 Model Management. His parties were not optional for the models on his books. Attend or lose your career. One model who refused him never worked again. Another who tried to speak out was told to stay silent. The message was always the same. You will not win. And you could disappear.The biggest names in fashion were in those rooms the entire time. Everyone knew. Nobody stopped it.This episode breaks down the full system. The psychology behind it. The rooms it happened in. And what every model needs to know to protect themselves.Follow on Instagram: @nakullaxwww.instagram.com/nakullaxEmail us at [email protected]

The co-founder of Next Model Management had a 40 year relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Her name appears over 5,000 times in the DOJ files. She was sending him lists of models after his conviction. She was exchanging model photographs and physical measurements with a convicted predator. She accepted a secret multi-million dollar loan from him while concealing his involvement from the people she was negotiating with. She stepped down at the back end of 2025. Next Management cut all ties and said they knew nothing.Her co-founder was Jean-Luc Brunel. Exposed on national television in 1988 for drugging and attacking models in Paris. She went into business with him the following year. He later launched MC2 Model Management with one million dollars of Epstein’s money. A former bookkeeper testified that models were loaned to wealthy clients for up to $100,000 a night and were not paid if refused.This episode is the full story. The agents. The agencies. The network. The playbook they used on the models inside it. And why it is still happening today.Follow on Instagram: @nakullaxwww.instagram.com/nakullax Email: [email protected]

Donald Trump built his political career on stopping illegal immigration. His modelling agency was bringing foreign girls into the United States on fraudulent visas, trapping them in debt, taking 80 percent of their earnings, and paying one of them $3,880 over three years. She called it slavery.Trump Model Management recruited girls as young as 14. It promised salaries of $75,000 a year and delivered almost nothing. Immigration attorneys confirmed the agency appeared to violate federal law. A US Senator called for a federal investigation. Nothing happened.Trump co-hosted modelling competitions with John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management, at the Plaza Hotel. Teenage models were told attending private dinners with powerful men was their professional duty. Not optional. A 2019 lawsuit alleges Casablancas sent a 15 year old model to a casting in 1990. The photographer was Jeffrey Epstein.In 2002 Trump described Epstein as a terrific guy who liked beautiful women, many of them on the younger side. Trump flew on Epstein’s jet at least seven times. Epstein recruited young women directly from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago spa. When Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested for child sex trafficking, Trump said he wished her well.Trump Model Management closed in April 2017. Donald Trump became President three months later. He is President again now.This episode is the full story. The Fashion Insider on Spotify.Follow on Instagram: @nakullaxEmail: [email protected]​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In November 2022, Balenciaga published a Christmas campaign featuring young children holding teddy bear handbags dressed in bondage gear. At the same time, a separate campaign contained a printed excerpt from a US Supreme Court ruling on child pornography laws. The children in the campaign were the children of Balenciaga employees. A committee of dozens of people at Kering approved the images. The $25 million lawsuit Balenciaga filed to blame the production company lasted seven days before being quietly dropped. The creative director said he didn’t see the creepy part.In January 2025, France’s main trade union described Balenciaga’s use of employees’ children as a Machiavellian deceit and filed a formal report alleging the parents had no real ability to refuse. In January 2026, the French Labour Inspectorate opened a formal investigation. In March 2025, the creative director was appointed to run Gucci.This episode is the full story. Every detail. The campaigns, the approval process, the children, the rehabilitation, and what it all says about an industry that has consistently chosen to protect itself over the people who cannot protect themselves.Follow on Instagram: @nakullaxEmail the show: [email protected]

Jonathan Anderson’s AW26 show for Dior was one of the most talked about moments of Paris Fashion Week. A glass pavilion built over a fountain in the Tuileries Gardens. A runway across floating lily pads. Water lily motifs on the clothes, on the accessories, on the heels. And an invitation that arrived in the post as a miniature green chair, a tiny replica of the iconic seats found throughout the Tuileries, made by the same company that has been producing the originals since the 1920s.Before the show started, Anderson said:"We live in a bizarre moment. This is escapism."And that sent me somewhere unexpected. To a museum at the edge of those same Tuileries Gardens called the Musée de l’Orangerie. Where Monet’s Water Lilies fill two entire rooms. Eight panels. Each one two metres tall. Monet began painting them in 1914, the same year the First World War started. The battlefields were 50 kilometres from his garden. Close enough to hear the artillery. And he wrote in his diary that he felt ashamed to be thinking about colour and form while so many people were suffering and dying for us.Then he kept painting anyway.This episode is about that impulse. About the wars being fought right now and why they touch every single one of us whether we are in Europe, in America, or anywhere else in the world. About what it means to make something beautiful inside all of that. And about why escapism is not ignorance. It is defiance. And right now, it might be one of the most important things we have.Follow on Instagram: @nakullaxEmail the show: [email protected]​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The front row at a major fashion show looks like culture. It feels like fashion. It is actually a multi-million dollar commercial operation and almost nobody talks about how it really works.In this episode I break down the full economy behind the front row. Who gets paid to be there and how much. Why Rihanna was paid $97,500 to sit at a single show in Paris. Why Beyoncé was commanding $100,000 per appearance at her peak. The full fee matrix that talent agencies use to negotiate these deals. The gifting economy, how brands send $4,000 bags to influencers for a production cost of $400 and book it as PR. The Dior Saddle Bag revival that was a planned operation from start to finish. The FTC disclosure rules that almost nobody follows and why brands rely on that. And my own honest experience of what it actually feels like to sit in those rooms, who surprised me, what made me angry, and what I think has been lost.This is the episode the fashion industry does not want you to hear.You can follow Nakul on Instagram @nakullaxwww.instagram.com/nakullaxYou can email us at [email protected]