Skinny models (still) reign at New York's Fashion Week

I want a fuller woman, proud of her femininity, with fuller sides, more life and a fuller bust. Elegant but with more emphasis on the curves….I think enough is enough with thin models. Recently we have not been watching women on the catwalk but a parade of skeletons. [Fashion designer Valentino as quoted in the London Daily Mail on 24 January 2007]

Last September, on the eve of New York’s Fall Fashion Week, I published an article entitled Good Riddance: Anorexia models no longer reign in Spain, in which I wrote that:

…as the madams of modeling in New York are flaunting their obsession with anorexic girls at their [bi]annual fashion bacchanal, the matrons of fashion in Spain announced that such sickly-looking mannequins will no longer be strutting their dry bones at Madrid’s....

Unfortunately, Madrid is hardly the fashion trend-setting capital of the world. And I fear that instead of setting a new tone its fashion vanguards will suffer a backlash from fashionistas in places like New York and Paris who seem terminally vested, commercially and psychologically, in anorexic models.

Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised a month ago when a few of my NYC friends - who took parochial umbrage at my dissing their madams of modeling – emailed to insist that I eat my words. They felt a few servings of humble pie were in order because the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) had just declared that it would be “issuing guidelines on the issue of skinny models” for all future fashions shows.

According to its declaration, the CFDA wanted to ensure that New York’s biannual Fashion Week no longer features the skeletal mannequins who have dominated fashion runways all around the world in recent years. And it implied that designers would be asked to only hire models who weigh-in at a weight commensurate with their height, which the industry maintains is, aspirationally, 10-15 pounds less than a non-model of equal height should weigh.

But after seeing the models being featured at NYC's Winter Fashion week, which began on Friday, I’m glad I insisted on seeing the proof in the pudding before eating any humble pie. Because either the CFDA merely trimmed the fat off any ambiguities about its preference for anorexic models or no one in the U.S. fashion industry got (or paid any attention to) their new wholesome guidelines.

These are the girls who will define the directional runways of Fall. [According to Models.com, the industry’s favorite reference site as determined by the New York Times]

Apropos this point, in his report on the top 25 models displaying the wares of 221 designers this week, it seems the only thing Times Fashion & Style writer Guy Trebay found alarming was the fact that only one of them is American. Although this merely reflects the reality that - unlike the trend-setting breed of heroin-chic Latinas and East Europeans - most American girls cannot do enough drugs, smoke enough cigarettes and purge their bodies of every morsel of food to be suitable for Haute couture.

Indeed, by today’s standards, former supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks - even at their most starved and bulimic (runway) weight – would be relegated to the Lane Bryant prêt-à-porter show. Because that’s where plus-size models strut their stuff for women who, from the haughty perspective of most NYC fashionistas, lack the ambition and discipline it takes to be thin, and therefore beautiful.

Alas, fulfilling my fear that no major capital would follow Madrid’s wholesome fashion, the supermodels at this week’s shows confirm that dying to be thin remains in. Therefore, Mamas - don’t let your girls grow up to be fashion models....

NOTE: A friend sent me a clip of the aforementioned Tyra Banks venting last week on her eponymous talk show - ostensibly in defense of “the way most American women look” – after a paparazzo shot, and had published, some “unflattering” pictures of her looking the way most American women look.

Indeed, the irony seemed completely lost on her (and her enabling audience) that Tyra was throwing a hissy fit because she was caught looking like her beautiful self – only with the 10-15 pounds she gained naturally after giving up modeling and its industry-standard starvation diet. But where she may have fooled some people by resorting to her old ways to lose a quick 10 pounds before doing that show and then fulminating indignantly about the pictures being doctored, it’s only a matter of time before she follows Oprah’s fashion by embracing her authentic “fuller” self.

Free your mind and the pounds will follow...?


Related Articles:
Fashion model fired for being too skinny...
Anorexia Models no longer reign in Spain
Putting a hex on skinny obsessed world
Girls dying to stay thin….

New York Fashion Week, Skinny Models