Sometime in 2004, Minerva Portillo had a meeting with Terry Richardson in his downtown Manhattan studio.

Richardson was one of the most famous fashion photographers in the world, going on to work for the likes of Tom Ford, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Yves Saint Laurent.

Portillo, 22 years old at the time, had just moved to New York from Spain and was excited for the next phase in her modeling career.

Richardson appeared enthusiastic at the idea of working with Portillo, but she left the meeting feeling perturbed, according to a lawsuit she filed Wednesday.

“During their meeting, Mr. Richardson wore nothing but a robe. Ms. Portillo was disturbed by this,” her lawyers wrote. “She tried to keep the meeting professional and kept her distance from Mr. Richardson while they looked through her portfolio together.”

After the meeting, Portillo expressed her trepidation to her agents at Trump Model Management — the modeling agency founded in 1999 by now-former-President Donald Trump — and told them that Richardson had worn only a robe, according to the lawsuit.

They waved away her distress, her suit alleges.

“Trump Model Management dismissed her concerns, telling her that such behaviour was commonplace and that given Mr. Richardson’s prominence and influence in the industry, Ms. Portillo should overlook his behaviour,” the lawsuit claims.

The agents booked a photoshoot with Richardson for that May, according to the suit. When she arrived at his studio, an employee offered a beverage that made her “feel dizzy, disoriented, and not fully in control of her body,” the lawsuit alleges.

During the photoshoot, the lawsuit alleges, Richardson instructed her to remove her clothing before forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

“She tried to push Mr. Richardson away and attempted to back away from him. But she was closely surrounded by Mr. Richardson’s employees, some of whom were cheering,” the lawsuit alleges. “Mr. Richardson had his hand on her head, keeping her in place.”

Richardson and his employees snapped photos while he sexually abused her, Portillo’s lawsuit says.

Portillo had another appointment with Richardson the next day, for a fashion brand, according to the lawsuit. She “attempted to tell an agent at Trump Model Management about the assault,” her lawsuit says, but the agency “insisted that she proceed with the appointment.”

Portillo, Richardson, and other members of the photography crew traveled in a van back to Manhattan from the shoot location. In the van, Richardson “unbuckled his pants, grabbed her head, and forced it towards his penis without her consent” before commanding her to perform oral sex, the lawsuit alleges, also while his staff took photos.

Portillo returned to Spain a week later, abandoning her modeling career, according to the lawsuit.

Richardson has faced numerous sexual assault accusations since the early 2000s and was effectively ousted from the fashion industry in 2017 amid the #MeToo movement. An attorney for Richardson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Portillo’s lawsuit.

Portillo had previously recounted her story in 2017, to Vogue Spain. She brought her new lawsuit in Manhattan federal court under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law passed in the wake of the #MeToo movement that created a one-year window permitting accusers to bring civil sexual misconduct lawsuits that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. The window for new lawsuits closes on Thursday.

In addition to Richardson, corporate entities related to Trump Model Management, which stopped operating in 2017, are named as defendants in the lawsuit. Attorneys representing those entities didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit does not identify the particular agents who represented Portillo and booked the meetings with Richardson.

“What happened to Ms. Portillo was foreseeable and preventable, because she had shared her concerns about working with Mr. Richardson with Trump Model Management,” Aleix Cuadrado, a Spain-based attorney representing Portillo in the case, said in a statement.

Richardson published the photos allegedly depicting Richardson’s sexual assault in a photo gallery and a book, and sold at least one of them to a private collector, according to the lawsuit. The photos depict Portillo gripping Richardson’s penis, Portillo performing oral sex on him, and Richardson ejaculating on Portillo’s face while she wears his glasses. Richardson often photographed models wearing his glasses.

Portillo’s lawsuit says she signed a release form for the photos, but that she did not understand what the form said because her native language is not English.

The release form falsely states the photos “do not depict actual sexually explicit conduct,” according to the suit.

Portillo relied on her agents at Trump’s management company to handle release forms for her, the lawsuit says.

“There is a difference between provocative — but consensually made — art, and sexual assault,” Christine Dunn, another one of Portillo’s attorneys, said in a statement. “Ms. Portillo alleges that this was the latter, and Mr. Richardson did not have the rights to distribute the images.”

By Jacob Shamsian

And it appears most creators won’t be sad to see it go. The video-sharing platform announced Monday that the fund — through which TikTok promised to pay creators $1 billion — will be discontinued in December.

“Our ultimate goal is to create the best experience possible on TikTok and provide a robust ecosystem of monetization offerings to creators,” the company said in a statement.

The change will effect creators in the US, UK, France, and Germany.

As part of the Creator Fund, TikTokers could earn money based on how many views their videos received. But some content creators said the app was underpaying for even the most viral videos.

Last year, top creators Hank Green and MrBeast called out the fund, which launched in 2020, saying it paid just pennies for every 1,000 views on TikTok.

Victoria Paris, a 24-year-old full-time influencer, previously told Insider that she earned just over $40,000 from TikTok’s creator fund in 2021. Paris said she relies on brand deals as her main source of income instead her videos alone.

But the tides began to turn when TikTok introduced the Creativity Program, which pays creators more for videos longer than one minute. Paris said she can earn around $10,000 per month from TikTok views as part of the Creativity Program.

Shawn Owens, 27, said the Creator Fund isn’t set up to benefit micro-influencers like himself. Despite having 70,000 followers and plenty of viral moments, Owens said he “never made any substantial money from the Creator Fund.” He did not provide exact figures for how much he’s made from the fund.

“I won’t miss the Creator Fund,” he told Insider. “In my opinion, it was set up for already established and well-known creators.”

Creators who are enrolled in TikTok’s creator fund have the option to upgrade to the Creativity Program if they wish to monetize their content, the company told Insider.

This article was written by Jordan Hart from Business Insider and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.

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Dollar Shave Club, the brand that pitched cheap razors with quirky commercials, is being sold by Unilever, its multinational owner.

The sale ends seven years of awkward partnership. Unilever struggled to grow Dollar Shave Club, sources previously told. The boundary-breaking brand helped shape the direct-to-consumer segment but never quite fit in at the more button-up multinational company.

Unilever is selling most of its stake in the brand to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management, the company said Thursday. Unilever will keep a 35 percent stake in the brand. The price of the deal wasn’t disclosed.

“This marks another step in our journey to transition our portfolio towards core strategic growth areas,” Fabian Garcia, president of Unilever Personal Care, said of the sale. He added that Dollar Shave Club “has a loyal membership and following.”

Nexus owns a portfolio of other consumer brands, such as shoe maker Toms.

Dollar Shave Club got its start in 2011, when Michael Dubin and Mark Levine founded the company to undercut the prices of razors offered by brands like Gillette and Schick. An early ad for Dollar Shave Club featured Dubin riding around on a forklift, extolling the virtues of the company’s cheaper razors and blades.

“Do you think your razor needs a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a back-scratcher and 10 blades?” Dubin asked in the ad. “Your handsome-ass grandfather had one blade — and polio. Stop paying for shave tech you don’t need.”

Unilever acquired the brand for $1 billion in 2016 because it had “a very distinctive appeal to a growing number of largely millennial men,” CFO Graeme Pitkethly told investors at the time. Deodorant brands Native and Schmidt’s Naturals were both acquired in 2017, by Procter & Gamble and Unilever respectively.

Unilever struggled to grow sales at Dollar Shave Club and the brand was later than rivals to establish itself in brick-and-mortar retailers. While it introduced new products, many, such as a $50-a-bottle cologne, were too expensive for the budget-conscious consumers that Dollar Shave Club had attracted with its pitch for inexpensive razors.

“You’ve created the cheapest way to buy razors in the world,” one source familiar with Unilever’s acquisition strategy told Insider in 2022. “You’ve chosen the Groupon consumer.”

Another source told Insider last year that Unilever did not move quickly enough to balance what Dollar Shave Club spent to acquire a customer — through ads and discounts, for example — with what that customer spent. Balancing acquisition costs and customer spend is a common concern for DTC brands, but less so for the more established brands under Unilever’s umbrella.

Even former CEO Alan Jope admitted that the acquisition hadn’t worked out. “Dollar Shave Club did not deliver as expected, and the economics of the DTC model changed,” then-CEO Jope said during an earnings call in 2022.

Nexus, Dollar Shave’s new owner, is hoping it will succeed where Unilever failed.

“We see growth potential and will invest in cutting-edge marketing, product quality, and new innovations,” Nexus partner Michael Cohen said. “Dollar Shave Club will also serve as a platform for additional brands with a similar DNA.”

By Alex Bitter

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Unilever’s New CEO May Need to Get Radical for a Company Turnaround

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