Mr. Casablancas was at the center of it all, unabashedly mixing business with his pleasure. Where Jerry and Eileen Ford, who founded Ford Models in 1946, had brought an almost puritanical sense of ethics to the modeling business, introducing modern accounting practices and standardized pay and working hours, Mr. Casablancas planted the flag of a provocateur, encouraging his young charges to enjoy a lifestyle of champagne and wild parties, and sometimes more. He also made the most successful ones very rich.

“I had the understanding of a guy who loved beautiful women, and above all who liked the sensuality of it all,” Mr. Casablancas said in a 2010 video interview with the blog Modelinia. “All of the other agents were either women or gay guys. They had their own approach, which in certain instances was probably superior to mine, but I had something I thought was unique. I looked at my models as women.”

He was largely responsible for glamorizing the business and turning models into idols, their egos expanding in direct proportion to their earnings potential. In 1990, at the height of the supermodel moment, Ms. Evangelista, then married to Gérald Marie, the president of Elite in Paris, made a comment to Vogue 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.”

Mr. Casablancas demanded top dollar for his models, developing them as celebrities and media personalities, the stars of music videos and presenters on MTV. In 1988, to make Ms. Crawford a recognizable face beyond fashion, he encouraged her to pose for Playboy magazine. The ensuing publicity led to a job as host of the MTV show “House of Style” and then to a Pepsi commercial. In 1995 she topped the Forbes list of highest-paid models, earning $6.5 million.

The success of Elite, with more than $100 million in annual model bookings during the years it was run by Mr. Casablancas, represented a turning point in modeling, for better and worse. As Wilhelmina Cooper, one of his rivals, said of the typical top model in 1978, “She is now picking or choosing who she wants to work for, instead of just taking what her agency tells her to.”