Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Frances Coombe/Instagram
A successful fashion model claims his agency deep-sixed his career after he came out as transgender last year, deeming him “insufficiently masculine” to work as a man, and dropping him from their roster.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, Frances Coombe, who has appeared in Vogue, i-D, and Women’s Wear Daily, accuses Muse Model Management NYC and its founder and president, Conor Kennedy, of civil rights violations over his gender identity, and wants them to pay for inflicting emotional distress and damaging his reputation, career, and income.
“It is no surprise that models evolve their looks, and I had been moving towards more androgyny for quite some time, as have many of my former agency’s models, both male and female,” Coombe said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast by his attorney, Jillian Weiss. “… I am filing this lawsuit so no other models of any gender need ever face such job discrimination in the modeling industry in the future.”