Casablancas was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 12, 1942, the youngest of three children of Fernando and Antonia Casablancas, a banker and former model respectively, and grandson of Catalan textile machinery inventor Fernando Casablancas Planell. His parents had left Spain during the 1930s to escape the Spanish Civil War, and the family subsequently lived in Argentina, Mexico, and France, among other countries. At age 8, he began attending Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland where he met “many children of the international jet set, and began a somewhat wayward life for the next two decades.” He continued his education at several universities in Europe but never graduated.
Career
Casablancas founded the Elite Model Management, a modeling agency, in 1972 in Paris, France. He had previously run the Paris-based agency Model Agency Elysée 3, which he founded in 1969. Casablancas is credited for developing the concept of supermodel in the popular culture, turning models into celebrities that were featured in mass media as personalities rather than just faces. Elite proved to be a success, grossing nearly $100 million in annual model bookings during the years that Casablancas ran the operations. By promoting the concept of supermodel, it was said that “turning models into idols, their egos in direct proportion to their earnings potential.” In 1990, Linda Evangelista, who, at the time was married to, the president of Elite in Paris, told Vogue something "that came to define the vainglorious world of modeling that Mr. Casablancas had created: "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day."" Casablancas founded the John Casablancas Modeling and Acting Agency and School, and the Star System model and talent management agency.
At age 22, Casablancas married Marie-Christine from France. The two lived in Rio de Janeiro for much of their marriage. Casablancas had one child with Marie-Christine, Cécile, who was born in 1969 in France. The two split soon after her birth. Casablancas met Jeanette Christiansen, a Danish model and the 1965 Miss Denmark, and the first model Casablancas ever represented, in 1967. They married in 1979 after the birth of their son, Julian Casablancas, lead vocalist of the American bands, The Strokes and The Voidz, in 1978. Casablancas and Christiansen divorced in 1983, as he was having a public affair with Stephanie Seymour, then 16 years old. In 1993, he married Aline Mendonça de Carvalho Wermelinger, his third wife and winner of Elite Model Look1992 in Brazil, with whom he had three children, John Jr., Fernando Augusto, and Nina. A resident of Miami, Florida, Casablancas died on July 20, 2013, in Rio de Janeiro, where he had been receiving treatment for cancer. He was 70 years old.
