The fashion modeling market also has a formal mechanism in place, known as the “option,” to ensure all tastemakers get in on the action. An option is an agreement between client and agent that enables the client to place a hold on the model’s future availability. Like options trading in finance markets, an option gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to make a purchase...
Options serve the symbolic purpose of “signaling” the model’s popularity to all other clients. During castings, clients are likely to ask models, “Which shows are you optioned for,” thereby letting them know their competitors’ tastes. Modeling agents drum up buzz using options as selling points too, as in, “Russell Marsh just optioned Coco Rocha for Prada!” To most fashion designers’ ears, such words sound like warm honey; they greatly reduce the anxiety of having to sort Coco from 599 other striking teenagers...
In the language of economic sociology, options are performative; they create what they putatively just describe. In other words, the models have agency (that’s market models we’re talking about, not the fashion models, heaven’s no!). Options enable investors to anticipate other investors’ actions, which spurs herding behavior, where actors decide to disregard their own information (i.e., “That Coco Rocha, urgh!”) and imitate instead the decisions taken by others before them (but Russell Marsh optioned her).