“What fashion considers to be
the ideal is barely a woman.”
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'The incitement of misogyny in pursuit of
profit.' Illustration by Matt Kenyon
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If fashion is your primary means of expression, I pity
you
Vogue's editor says she is bored by
questions about thin models. But then, she's selling clothes for a misogynistic
industry
Tanya Gold
Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British
Vogue, is bored with being asked why models are so thin. She said this on Radio
2 to Lily Allen, who acted like a frightened child but nonetheless asked
Shulman tough questions that fashion journalists won't ask. Fashion journalists
are notoriously prostrate beneath the clothes; their shtick is to act like
Vladimir Putin's acolytes trapped in Topshop, screaming about belts, and if you
break out and speak the truth, you become Liz Jones, an outcast in your own
genre.
Allen said images of thin models made her
feel "crap". Well, they don't make me feel crap, answered Shulman (I
paraphrase) – so who cares what you think? Anyway, Shulman is bored with this
thin-themed twaddle; such a fashion word, "bored", so passive
aggressive, so unanswerable. You may be right but you're dull; this is
no-platforming in the style of Mean Girls. In fact Shulman can't even really
stretch to being "bored", despite being paid what I presume is a
large salary for a slender workload; she is, in fact, only "sort of"
bored, because this phrasing better expresses the exact proportions of her
ennui, which I can only presume is definitely overweight.
She told Allen that looking at overweight
women didn't make her feel good, as if overweight is the only alternative, in
her mind, to significantly malnourished. Shulman has written to designers
asking for larger sample sizes. (I read that in another piece of iconography
posing as an interview.) But that was it. She is, at the end of things, only an
advocate for the clothes. She calls herself a journalist; but she is a
saleswoman.
The answer to the original question of why
models are so thin – and do prepare to be bored, because I cannot give you a
new answer because the old answer is boring (as is the old question, of course):
it is the incitement of misogyny in pursuit of profit.
What fashion considers to be the ideal is
barely a woman. This is so obviously the case there is almost nothing else to
say. In this dystopia Shulman can, in her defence, tell Lily Allen that the
Vogue cover girl for April, Nigella Lawson, is a "totally real
person" – as opposed to what? Lawson is a woman of extraordinary beauty,
but to Shulman, obviously deadened by an unceasing parade of tiny, malleable
teenagers (she says "clothes to our kind of western eye look better on a
thinner frame"), Nigella is simply "real".
But fashion's fantasy woman – her default
fault, if you will – is a mere scrape of a woman, a woman who has had no time
to actually be a woman: too young, too small, a vulnerable thing I often
imagine crawling from an egg in Karl Lagerfeld's fridge. (And he is a man so
pathologically isolated, his stated muse is now a cat called Choupette with a
Twitter feed. Sample tweet: "Anna Wintour sits SECOND ROW at
@MaisonValentino? Tres Horror!") It is as if fashion closed its eyes and
dreamed up the woman who most closely resembles dust.
Why? Some say it is because designers are
all gay, and are afraid of big bottoms and so forth, but this is nonsense, and
homophobic; fashion is full of straight women capable of revolution, if they
weren't all hostages in Topshop and so very bored.
Shulman says that fashion sells a fantasy,
a wonderland, and this may be true for the few thousand women who can afford to
wear couture; but it is a wonderland where happiness is as fleeting as any
narcotic (six collections a year?). And it is, above all, monetised.
If fashion is your primary means of
expression, you are, for me, only to be pitied – because women have better
means of expression nowadays. Is it a coincidence that the fashion houses' most
avid customers are the female relatives of the tyrants of the Middle
East? Fashion is obsessed with surfaces; and it is full of
victims.
I would not say that all fashion people are
unhappy, but it does seem to attract the unhappy, the soon to be surgically
enhanced. And so this child creature, this ideal, is no coincidence. She is a
complex sales strategy; both fragile and remote. Because she cannot be
impersonated, she sells self-loathing, as Lily Allen noted, and therefore
clothing, perfumes and the rest. It is not the wonderland that Shulman
espoused, but it is an escape from something that can never be successfully
eluded for any length of time – yourself.
If fashion is truly, as apologists suggest,
dedicated to female self-expression, then why have trends? Why have a
homogeneous law of beauty that cannot be bent? Why have subservient media that
behave, so shamefully, like a marketing subsidiary? Why call it
"fashion" at all?
In fact, the fashion industry is the most
perfect expression of the late capitalist business model. It pretends to sell
free choice, but is conventional. It is conservative, racist, misogynist, a
terrible polluter, and a fearsome hierarchy. It is covetous, exploitative of
models, workers and customers, and it is often tasteless: Vogue Italia's 2006
State of Emergency, for instance, photographed models being sexually assaulted
by a tableau of men dressed like Batman, to celebrate – or commemorate – 9/11.
And all this it does, as Alexandra Shulman
has demonstrated, with a tiny yawn – a cat's yawn, perhaps? – and entirely
without shame.
• Twitter: @TanyaGold1
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Many
fashion editors get caught up in perpetuating the stereotype … and often have
eating disorders themselves, says Clements. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty
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Former Vogue editor: The truth about size zero
The fashion
industry is not a pretty business. Here, one of its own, the former editor of
Australian Vogue Kirstie Clements describes a thin-obsessed culture in which
starving models eat tissues and resort to surgery when dieting isn't enough
Kirstie
Clements
One of the
most controversial aspects of fashion magazines, and the fashion industry, is
models. Specifically, how young they are and how thin they are. It's a topic
that continues to create endless debate, in the press and in the community. As
the editor of Australian Vogue, my opinion was constantly sought on these
issues, and the images we produced in the magazine were closely scrutinised.
It's a precarious subject, and there are many unpleasant truths beneath the
surface that are not discussed or acknowledged publicly.
When I
first began dealing with models in the late 1980s we were generally drawing from
a pool of local girls, who were naturally willowy and slim, had glowing skin,
shiny hair and loads of energy. They ate lunch, sparingly for sure, but they
ate. They were not skin and bones. I don't think anyone believes that a model
can eat anything she wants, not exercise and still stay a flawless size 8
(except when they are very young), so whatever regime these girls were
following was keeping them healthy.
But I began
to recognise the signs that other models were using different methods to stay
svelte. I was dressing a model from the US on a beauty shoot, and I noticed
scars and scabs on her knees. When I queried her about them she said,
nonchalantly: "Oh yes. Because I'm always so hungry, I faint a lot."
She thought it was normal to pass out every day, sometimes more than once.
On another
shoot I was chatting to one of the top Australian models during lunch. She had
just moved to Paris
and was sharing a small apartment with another model. I asked her how that was
working out. "I get a lot of time by myself actually," she said,
picking at her salad. "My flatmate is a 'fit model', so she's in hospital
on a drip a lot of the time." A fit model is one who is used in the top
designer ateliers, or workrooms, and is the body around which the clothes are
designed. That the ideal body shape used as a starting point for a collection
should be a female on the brink of hospitalisation from starvation is
frightening.
The longer
I worked with models, the more the food deprivation became obvious. Cigarettes
and Diet Coke were dietary staples. Sometimes you would see the tell-tale signs
of anorexia, where a girl develops a light fuzz on her face and arms as her
body struggles to stay warm. I have never, in all my career, heard a model say
"I'm hot", not even if you wrapped her in fur and put her in the
middle of the desert.
Society is
understandably concerned about the issues surrounding body image and eating
disorders, and the dangerous and unrealistic messages being sent to young women
via fashion journals. When it comes to who should be blamed for the portrayal
of overly thin models, magazine editors are in the direct line of fire, but it
is more complex than that. The "fit" model begins the fashion
process: designer outfits are created around a live, in-house skeleton. Few
designers have a curvy or petite fit model. These collections are then sent to
the runway, worn by tall, pin-thin models because that's the way the designer
wants to see the clothes fall. There will also be casting directors and
stylists involved who have a vision of the type of woman they envisage wearing
these clothes. For some bizarre reason, it seems they prefer her to be young,
coltish, 6ft tall and built like a prepubescent boy.
It is too
simplistic to blame misogynistic men, although in some cases I believe that
criticism is deserved. There are a few male fashion designers I would like to
personally strangle. But there are many female fashion editors who perpetuate
the stereotype, women who often have a major eating disorder of their own. They
get so caught up in the hype of how brilliant clothes look on a size 4, they
cannot see the inherent danger in the message. It cannot be denied that
visually, clothes fall better on a slimmer frame, but there is slim, and then
there is scary skinny.
Despite
protestations by women who recognise the danger of portraying any one body type
as "perfect", the situation is not improving. If you look back at the
heady days of the supermodels in the late 80s and early 90s, beauties such as
Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigová and Claudia Schiffer look positively curvaceous
compared to the sylphs of today. There was a period in the last three years
when some of the girls on the runways were so young and thin, and the shoes
they were modelling so high, it actually seemed barbaric. I would watch the
ready-to-wear shows on the edge of my seat, apprehensive and anxious. I'm not
comfortable witnessing teen waifs almost on the point of collapse
After the
shows, the collection is made available for the press to use for their shoots.
These are the samples we all work with and they are obviously the size of the
model who wore them on the runway. Thus, a stylist must cast a model who will
fit into these tiny sizes. And they have become smaller since the early 90s.
We've had couture dresses arrive from Europe
that are so minuscule they resemble christening robes. There are no bigger
samples available, and the designer probably has no interest in seeing their
clothes on larger women. Many high fashion labels are aghast at the idea of producing
a size 14, and they certainly wouldn't want to see it displayed in the pages of
the glossies.
As a Vogue
editor I was of the opinion that we didn't necessarily need to feature size
14-plus models in every issue. It is a fashion magazine; we are showcasing the
clothes. I am of the belief that an intelligent reader understands that a model
is chosen because she carries clothes well. Some fashion suits a curvier girl,
some doesn't. I see no problem with presenting a healthy, toned, Australian
size 10 [UK
8-10]. But as sample sizes from the runway shows became smaller, 10 was no
longer an option and the girls were dieting drastically to stay in the game.
It is the
ultimate vicious cycle. A model who puts on a few kilos can't get into a sample
size on a casting and gets reprimanded by her agency. She begins to diet, loses
the weight, and is praised by all for how good she looks. But instead of
staying at that weight, and trying to maintain it through a sensible diet and
exercise, she thinks losing more will make her even more desirable. And no one
tells her to stop.
Girls who
can't diet their breasts away will have surgical reductions. They then enter
into dangerous patterns of behaviour that the industry – shockingly – begins to
accept as par for the course. We had a term for this spiral in the office. When
a model who was getting good work in Australia starved herself down two sizes
in order to be cast in the overseas shows – the first step to an international
career – we would say in the office that she'd become "Paris thin".
This dubious achievement was generally accompanied by mood swings, extreme
fatigue, binge eating and sometimes bouts of self-harming. All in the quest to
fit into a Balenciaga sample.
Not every
model has an eating disorder, but I would suggest that every model is not
eating as much as she would like to. In 1995 I cast a lovely Russian model for
a studio shoot in Paris,
and I noticed that by mid-afternoon she hadn't eaten a thing (we always
catered). Her energy was fading, so I suggested we stop so she could have a
snack. She shook her head and replied: "No, no. It is my job not to
eat." It was one of the only sentences she knew how to say in English.
A few years
later we booked another Russian girl, who was also starving herself, on a trip
to Marrakech. When the team went out to dinner at night she ordered nothing,
but then hunger would get the better of her and she would pick small pieces of
food off other people's plates. I've seen it happen on many trips. The models
somehow rationalise that if they didn't order anything, then they didn't really
take in the calories. They can tell their booker at the agency before they
sleep that they only had a salad. By the end of the trip, she didn't have the
energy to even sit up; she could barely open her eyes. We actually had her lie
down next to a fountain to get the last shot.
In 2004, a fashion season in
which the girls were expected to be particularly bone-thin, I was having lunch
in New York
with a top agent who confidentially expressed her concern to me, as she did not
want to be the one to expose the conspiracy. "It's getting very
serious," she said. She lowered her tone and glanced around to see if
anyone at the nearby tables could hear. "The top casting directors are demanding
that they be thinner and thinner. I've got four girls in hospital. And a couple
of the others have resorted to eating tissues. Apparently they swell up and
fill your stomach."
I was
horrified to hear what the industry was covering up and I felt complicit. We
were all complicit. But in my experience it is practically impossible to get a
photographer or a fashion editor – male or female – to acknowledge the
repercussions of using very thin girls. They don't want to. For them, it's all
about the drama of the photograph. They convince themselves that the girls are
just genetically blessed, or have achieved it through energetic bouts of yoga
and eating goji berries.
I was at
the baggage carousel with a fashion editor collecting our luggage after a trip
and I noticed a woman standing nearby. She was the most painfully thin person I
had ever seen, and my heart went out to her. I pointed her out to the editor
who scrutinised the poor woman and said: "I know it sounds terrible, but I
think she looks really great." The industry is rife with this level of
body dysmorphia from mature women.
In my early
years at the magazine there was no minimum age limit on models, and there were
occasions that girls under the age of 16 were used. Under my editorship, the
fashion office found a new favourite model – Katie Braatvedt, a 15-year-old
from New Zealand.
We had her under contract: the idea being that Vogue grooms and protects the
girls at the beginning of their careers. But in April 2007 I ran a cover of
Katie wearing an Alex Perry gown standing in a treehouse, and received a storm
of protest, from readers and the media, accusing us of sexualising children. I
lamely debated the point, claiming that the photographs were meant to be
innocent and charming, but in the end I had to agree wholeheartedly with the
readers. I felt foolish even trying to justify it. I immediately instigated a
policy that we would not employ models under the age of 16. Internationally
Vogue has since launched a project called Health Initiative, instigated by the US
Vogue editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, which bans the use of models under 16 and
pledges that they will not use models they know to be suffering from eating
disorders. The first part you can police. The second is disingenuous nonsense,
because unless you are monitoring their diet 24/7, you just can't be sure.
I had no dealings
with Wintour during those years, and on the few occasions we were introduced,
her sense of froideur was palpable. The deference she commands from people is
astonishing to watch. There appears to exist some kind of psychological
condition that causes seemingly sane and successful adults to prostrate
themselves in her presence. It's not just respect – it's something else. People
actually want to be scared witless of her, so she obliges. After they had met
me, people would often say: "You're so nice and normal" – often I
think with a tinge of disappointment, wishing I'd been just a little bit like
Wintour. I could never win. I was either expected to be terrifying or snobbish.
And I don't consider myself either.
Being a
Vogue editor is precarious. It's a job everybody in the industry desires, and
most people are convinced they could do it better. I was harder on myself than
anybody would be if I made a mistake, and when you're the editor of Vogue, your
slip-ups are very public. Traditional publishing is under enormous pressure,
with declining revenues and readership, and decisions are being made to
radically cut costs and do anything to
please the advertiser. For me, this is perilous. I still believe in the magic.
This is an
edited extract from The Vogue Factor by Kirstie Clements. Buy it for £8.99 (RRP
£12.99) at guardianbookshop.co.uk or call 0330 333 6846.
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