April’s that time of year when large swathes of the population start regretting all the chocolate they ate over Easter. After the restraint during Lent, indulging in masses of the stuff is acceptable in a way that just wouldn’t be tolerated in January – not with all those New Year’s resolutions about losing weight and slimming.
Away from the real world, the fashion industry has long regarded a slim, skinny form as the most beautiful. With mounting alarm at incessant reports of worsening obesity rates in the UK, such an ideal is radically out of touch with the ordinary people (men have body-image issues too – have you seen Cristiano Ronaldo’s torso?) expected to buy the products of that industry. Time and again the industry has been criticised for portraying images of stick-thin women as ideal, which is unobtainable for most outside the fashion world.
In January this year German magazine Brigitte controversially banned professional models from its shoots, after being swamped with letters from female readers complaining that they couldn’t identify with such thin models. Worse, the editors themselves were tired of airbrushing models to plump them up. As of January, Brigitte (circulation 700,000) has been using readers as models, encouraging the ‘normal’ woman to briefly step out of her normal life and present fashion to the masses.
Such a move does raise questions about how exactly we define a ‘normal’ woman, as well as the purpose of fashion. As an industry, fashion’s purpose is simply to clothe us and (maybe/hopefully) make us feel and look good in those clothes, right? As an art form though… perhaps Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld has a point when he says that fashion is about ‘dreams and illusions’. Sure, but the dreams of an eccentric, seventy-something German aren’t much use to the average UK shopper or student.
In the UK, Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman last year sent a letter to top designers (including Lagerfeld) complaining that sample clothing sent out by fashion houses was ‘minuscule’. She argued that magazines were therefore forced into hiring increasingly thin models, and then – like Brigitte – airbrushing them plumper.
The industry was hesitant to respond to Shulman’s letter – possibly timid after two models died in circumstances connected with eating disorders. When contacted by The Times a Christian Dior spokeswoman stressed Dior’s ‘well-known policy of casting healthy-looking models’, but others – like Chanel and Versace – declined to comment. Eleni Renton, founder of Leni’s Model Management (who have M&S underwear model Natalie Suliman on their books), blames designers for ‘creating female clothes for a man’s body. No hips or bust’.
Again, it seems that new collections are being designed for the sake of the fashion world, and not for the consumer. With increasingly thin models, fashion becomes more about the high art and illusion of Lagerfeld (see the current exhibition at Hull Truck, ‘Now and Ten’, for an example of fashion as high art; pretty, though utterly impractical) and less about what we high street shoppers want to (and can) wear. This attitude is not only dangerous for models but also distances the industry from its wider market. That’s ‘wider’ in both senses, though the pun was unintended. The wider market may have more luck with online magazine, Plus (www.plusemodelmag.com), or retailers like M&S.
The thing is, the person modelling isn’t all that important. What matters is that we the consumers can see ourselves wearing the clothes – otherwise, why buy them? The fashion industry needs to get over the size zero debate, stop encouraging the skinnier figure, and reconnect with its consumer base of everyday (non-size zero) people – the people who worry about their weight after indulging in Easter chocolate.
Richard T. Watson
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