Adelaide’s modelling agent in Milan
David Brown left Adelaide as a young man in the 1970s looking for adventure. He ended up in Italy, becoming one of Europe’s most successful modelling agents. Still based in Milan, the 70-year-old tells SALIFE about his path from Adelaide schoolboy to supermodel manager.
It’s easy to see why David Brown has been so successful as a model agent to the stars for the past 30 years – he is discreet, shuns the limelight and protects his famous clients at all costs.
David established his Milan-based model agency d’management group in 2001 with a client list which reads like a who’s who of supermodel stardom over the past 30 years.
The first 25 models on David’s books included Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigova, Carla Bruni, Monica Bellucci, Gisele Bundchen, Heidi Klum, Helena Christensen, Veronica Webb and Alek Wek.
Not bad for a former Adelaide schoolboy who had no idea what he wanted to do when he finished studying.
So, how did this former Adelaide Hills local end up as a Milan-based model agent to the stars? It all unfolded quite unintentionally.
Having attended Crafers Primary School and then Pulteney Grammar School, David enrolled in a “not particularly useful” arts degree in philosophy, history and political science at Flinders University.
Still unsure what career path he wanted to take, David was lucky enough to secure a work experience summer job in the office of then-premier Don Dunstan.
“I got a temporary lowly clerk’s position in the fledgling Arts Development Division of the Premier’s Department,” David says.
“I was working with the Premier’s then-senior advisor Len Amadio, who went on to establish the first arts ministry to oversee the government’s program of permanent government funding of the arts.
“On the promise of pursuing studies part time, I was given a permanent job in the department in 1973.”
David stayed on in the Premier’s Department for five years but then began to seek something more, something outside the realm of South Australia.
“I felt a pressing need to broaden my horizons and certainly didn’t want to follow that well-worn path of school-leavers who usually headed for England and often ended up partying much of the time in Earl’s Court with other school friends, only to return home a year later to start university.
“I had friends in Italy, so I headed for Milan intent on learning a new language, discovering a new culture and seeing for myself this new fashion industry which was being made famous by the likes of Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace. That was in 1978, and I was 23.”
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To make ends meet, David, who had taken 12 months’ unpaid long-service leave from his government job, found work at the then-famous British School on Via Monte Napoleone (where Gucci is now located) teaching English to businessmen and school children.
“Milan was then the destination of choice of young designers, many from the UK, photographers and aspiring models and the social life was very heady too,” he says.
“After a couple of years, and having decided to chuck in my job back in Adelaide and armed with passable Italian by then, I ended up applying for a job in the modelling business when a friend, Australian model Joy Bell, convinced me to look into working at her agency, then one of Milan’s biggest and most famous model agencies, Image by Riccardo Gay.
“My English language background was a great advantage in a country where English wasn’t taught widely in schools and I remember one of my first assistant agent tasks was to call and often wake up some of our international models who were in town for the fashion shows, including iconic models of the likes of Iman and Dalma, who famously had their own timetable and would often arrive on the job at the last minute. I eventually became director of that agency staying on for nearly 20 years.”
During his years at Image by Riccardo Gay, David had an opportunity to head up a new division of the agency which, in effect, became an agency within an agency.
It specialised in the unique opportunities that were emerging in the market thanks to the new phenomenon of the supermodel.
“It was the likes of Linda [Evangelista], Cindy [Crawford], Naomi [Campbell] and Christy [Turlington] who arrived to stay and rewrote the future evolution of the model industry,” David says.
“And because Milan was a market where few models lived and I didn’t have to deal with their more mundane daily needs wherever they were based, I felt this was the perfect opportunity to open my own agency specialising in the management of a group of supermodels, only for their work in the Italian market.”
With the support of close friend and long-time business manager Matteo Pauletta, d’management group opened under its own steam in 2001 with the initial 25 models.
It has been reported in the past that David famously held the hand of supermodel Naomi Campbell as she sat shaking with trepidation in the dentist chair following a dental emergency in the early hours of the morning before a Versace fashion show.
When asked by SALIFE to confirm this story and divulge other antics and anecdotes about his famous clients, David is circumspect.
“I could write a book on this question, but I have made a promise to myself and my clients that their secrets and privacy are safe with me and I will never write that book,” he says, adding that the qualities needed to cope in his line of work are “patience, diplomacy and understanding”.
“I am a Libran, and they say we are well-balanced by nature, and it is part of my astrological DNA to stay grounded in this industry.
“You can’t let the so-called glamour of it go to your head. And I am a very private person, so I am non-practising Instagram observer as opposed to a serial poster.
“I advertise my work and our talents, not myself. I have loved instinctively believing in the potential of some great talents I have represented over the years, advising them, managing and assisting them for the long haul, and I have been doing that for many of them now for more than 20 or 30 years, and I take pride in their evolution and success. It’s very grounding.”
One person in particular who David mentions is model and actress Monica Bellucci, star of movies such as The Passion of the Christ, The Matrix Reloaded and The Apartment.
“I was there in the early stages of her modelling career and helped guide her through her evolution into an internationally successful actress. That has been a source of great pride for me, I have to say.
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“Monica is a friend and still sought after as a cover girl and brand ambassador. Her daughter Deva Cassel also started modelling with us and following in her mother’s footsteps, did her very first perfume campaign with Dolce & Gabbana and is now well on the way to a successful acting career as well.”
The catwalks of Europe and Hollywood movie stars are a long way from the Adelaide Hills, where David grew up with younger sisters Virginia and Jane. He says it was a happy upbringing with loving parents Helen and Andy.
“We were blessed with wonderful parents. Mum, the only and rather indulged child of a dentist, was initially a stay-at-home mother raising three kids born in close succession,” David says.
“Dad was an engineer, a self-made man and incredibly hard-working, eternally busy in those early days, building up a successful engineering business punctuated with occasional weekends pursuing his early passion for cars as a gentleman racing driver.
“I suppose they were considered a golden couple of sorts, both blessed with very good looks and very popular amongst their contemporaries in that post-war Adelaide social scene. As kids, the girls spent weekends horse-riding and inevitably I was with Dad at Mallala racetrack.”
David says his mother harboured hopes of him becoming a lawyer or diplomat while his father hoped for a time that David would follow in his footsteps as an engineer.
“But in fact, they were wonderfully supportive to all of us in whatever we put our minds to.
“Sadly, we lost both parents too soon, both succumbing to cancer at a relatively young age, Dad at 62 and Mum at 65.”
When reflecting on his career, David says it comes down to “consistency and professionality with our clients and models”.
“We have always been very selective in choosing talents and have never been tempted to represent great numbers of models,” he says.
The most challenging aspect of his work these days is keeping up with the times and “the constant challenge that poses”.
“Where do I start? The industry has changed enormously since I started in the ’80s. Then, you could count the number of agencies in Milan almost on one hand. Now there must be just under a hundred of all types and sizes. It was the same with the relatively contained number of real models in those days.
“Then, the career possibilities of models were very achievable, based on talent and ongoing successes, but sadly these days the likelihood of a career is much reduced as models have almost become a disposable commodity in the industry.
“Many start on a high, being the latest discovery by or from, in one fashion show season for example and all but disappear by the next as old news. It is worrying.”
David still works five days a week from his Milan office, but loves to escape the European winter, holidaying annually with friends. His destination of choice is Marrakech, where in 2005 he bought and renovated an original riad, a traditional Moroccan house, or palace with an interior courtyard, which he has transformed into a boutique hotel.
“It started out as a bit of a challenge to restore a lovely ancient riad into a holiday home but that soon proved impractical as an idea,” David says.
“So, I enlisted the help and advice of my dear friend and now business partner in the riad, Mounaim Nezhari, to assist with my entry into three fields I knew little or nothing about – restoration, interior design and decoration, as well as the business of hospitality.
“The riad is a joy and has been a source of great pride in the job Mounaim has done in building it up into the successful boutique hotel it has become. It only has six suites, but we continuously rate in the top five of the many hundreds of similar structures of all sizes operating there.”
David, who is happily single but adds “you never know”, says retirement is something he occasionally dreams about but it’s not on the cards for now.
He returns to Adelaide most Christmases, and while he misses the peaceful quiet lifestyle that is unique to Adelaide, he says Italy will always be home now, thanks to an adventure that began almost 50 years ago.
“I recently turned 70 in body existence but I’m still somewhere around my 40s in my mind and it doesn’t really let my body know too often,” he says. “Time goes so quickly, though.”
This article first appeared in the January 2026 issue of SALIFE magazine.
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