Milan's Beef About Skeletal Models

By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 8, 2006; Page C01

This week the trade organization that oversees the seasonal runway shows in Milan announced that it plans to develop a nationwide campaign to fight anorexia. The goal is to keep emaciated and unhealthy-looking models off the catwalks and out of fashion advertising campaigns. How precisely the Camera della Moda plans to do that has yet to be determined.

Earlier this year, officials in Madrid banned from the runways models whose body mass index (a measure of body fat) fell below 18. That announcement barely caused fashion insiders to blink because Madrid is not one of the international centers of fashion. In fact, when Didier Grumbach, the man in charge of Paris's fashion week, was asked about the Madrid ban, he suggested that it was unwieldy, misguided and an inappropriate infringement on the creativity of designers. And in some respects he was right. It is not possible to legislate body weight.

But it is significant when Milan notices that some models look as though they have not eaten in months, because the Italian city -- along with Paris, London and New York -- helps set the global fashion agenda and ultimately the social definition of beauty. With design houses such as Giorgio Armani, Prada, Versace and Gucci based there, Milan has the kind of clout that Madrid lacks.

One of the questions the industry must address is the influence it has over women and their body image. The deaths of two underweight South American models earlier this year, one from anorexia and the other from heart failure, caused a flurry of news stories that suggested a cause-and-effect relationship between fashion's obsession with thinness and anorexia. But anorexia is a thousand times more complicated than a desire to fit into runway samples.

Still, being pounded over the head with the belief that thin, thin, thin is beautiful can chip away at the fragile self-esteem of a young girl . . . and at the confidence and spirit of smart and accomplished women. Any industry that threatens the mental and physical health of its employees and customers needs to engage in thorough self-examination.

The fashion industry did not abruptly embrace skeletal models. These women have always been achingly thin. Remember Twiggy? (And for a time, male models looked as though they were feasting on nothing but cigarettes and air.) But the models have gotten thinner, and now they also look sad, vacant and unhealthy.

In the 1980s, curvy women with big personalities such as Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell dominated the runways. They were the "glamazons" noted for their sexy struts, their figures and their pizzazz. Then along came Kate Moss, the invasion of the waifs and fashion's strange fascination with heroin chic. A wan, homeless look dominated. (In hindsight, Moss looked practically plump next to some of the current runway stars.) The Brazilian models followed. They were led by Gisele Bundchen, who resurrected the industry's love affair with curves. While these models had a hint of hips, they made the stars of the '80s look plus-size.

Many of the models currently in vogue come from Eastern Europe. They are pale, almost to the point of translucent, and astonishingly thin. They look positively rickety. Seeing one in a swimsuit can make you shudder. They are not sexy or even particularly pretty. (How can they be when they look as though the life has been sucked out of them?) They're not making a pouty face for the cameras because they're feeling sexy. They look like they're pouting because they're hungry.

One model who has received a great deal of runway time recently is Vlada Roslyakova. When she first started appearing in shows of well-known designers, she stood out because of her awkward, robotic gait. She had a rigid posture and a tendency not to move her arms. Over the seasons, she has learned how to simultaneously move both her arms and her legs when she walks. But she remains alarmingly thin, without curves or affect. Yet she had no shortage of employment opportunities this past season.

The vigorous curves and assertive expression of Cindy Crawford in 1997.(Jeff Christensen - Reuters)Another emaciated model, Sasha Pivovarova, has been the star of Prada advertisements. She marches down the catwalk with her icy blue eyes staring wide and unblinking from their hollow sockets. If folks saw her looking like that on the street, they'd think she was delirious. They'd throw her a bagel and run the other way.

The designer Giorgio Armani has noted that he doesn't like these featherweight models. And in his spring 2007 show, his models were thin but not distracting. Armani wants to keep the attention focused on his clothes. (That's also one of the reasons he has always shied away from using star models.) Implied in his preference is an element of respect, not just for women but also for the human form.

Many of Milan's female designers use hyper-thin models. A whole phalanx of emaciated young women walked the runway for Miuccia Prada. Their size was especially noticeable because many wore microscopic tunics and bloomers. Their tiny legs, with kneecaps wider than thighs, were clearly visible. They made an appearance at Gucci, too, which is now under the direction of Frida Giannini. And they were sprinkled in at Versace, where Donatella Versace is in charge. These designers say women's power, confidence or intelligence inspire their work, and then they send bony zombies down the runway. How can this be?

For all the emphasis the fashion industry places on creative integrity and individual vision, an enormous part of the problem is that its members all too often can't shake off a junior high school mentality of wanting to be part of the popular crowd. All it takes is for one influential person -- designer, editor, model booker -- to pronounce a girl "major." Everyone wants to use the same in-demand models. Hot models lend status to modest shows and confirm the stature of big shows. Over a typical runway season, the same models appear so often on different runways that it is easy to become immune to how shockingly thin they are. After a while, it seems normal that a model's thighs are the same circumference as a 12-year-old's upper arm.

The industry did not make the leap directly from Naomi to Sasha. Waifs were the steppingstone. These are the post-waifs.
And if the industry does not think carefully about the current aesthetic, what comes next could be truly ghastly.