FASHION FAIL
kiddie models like Thylane and regular catwalk waifs, he represents something I’ve always found sinister about the industry that pays my wages. The ongoing campaign to demonise traditional womanly features – breasts, bottoms, thighs. So far as fashion’s concerned, curves are gross and not very profitable. Obesity, as Karl Lagerfeld, the industry’s ever-shrinking, ghoulish godfather, so politely points out, is a social issue: “In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny,” he says. “There are nearly 30 per cent of young people who are too fat. So let’s take care of the zillions of the too-fat before we talk about the percentage that’s left.” But what he fails to mention is how extreme skinniness is what his industry runs on. It’s the ultimate drug, knocking life into merchandising, retail and branding. Pumping money into the veins of haute couture, if not food into the bellies of its adherents. Fashion is meant to sell clothes. Clothes are bought in stores on racks, hanging from coat hangers or – increasingly – on the internet, displayed flat against white studio backgrounds. What matters here is not looking good on a person, but looking good on a hanger. When people do have to enter the equation, in places like catwalk shows and editorial shoots, 72
it makes sense to hire the human equivalent of those clothes hangers. Pre-pubescents, teens who’ve dodged puberty through starvation and (occasionally) skinny men all fit the bill perfectly. Yes, fashion is meant to sell clothes. But these days they’re almost beside the point. The grand design houses are multi-million dollar operations and a large chunk of their
revenue comes not from clothing, but assorted brand extensions: perfume lines, handbags, licensing deals. In a way, the clothes are just a front. The people who wear them are walking, talking brand ambassadors, meant to inspire the rest of us who can’t afford $10,000 for a one-season frock to instead drop our cash on branded scents, accessories, TV shows, credit cards. The industry doesn’t want fatties for ambassadors. That’s why average-sized women can’t find prêt-à-porter clothes that fit. They were never meant for them. And that’s why fashion needs scandal, it needs column inches, it needs
9H7PO