Former Vogue editor lifts lid on starving models
Sydney – Models are under such pressure to be abnormally thin that they are eating tissue paper and starving themselves for days on end, according to a former editor of Vogue magazine.
Kirstie Clements, who edited Vogue Australia for 13 years, said it was not unusual for girls to become so malnourished that they had to be admitted to hospital and put on a drip.
Five years after an international anti-anorexia campaign persuaded some countries to ban ultra-thin models, her book, The Vogue Factor, details how stuck the fashion world still is in the insidious world of size zero.
Clements worked at Vogue for 27 years until she was removed as editor last May. As she worked her way up from the front desk, she observed how the tyranny of size pushed scores of young women to put their health at serious risk.
Struggling to meet the demands of fashion designers and casting directors, their own agents would take action only when their weight dropped to drastic levels.
‘‘I was at dinner with a model agent in LA one night three years ago when the girls were super-thin [because of that season’s fashions],’’ Clements said. ‘‘She said, ‘We’ve a few girls on drips this season because the samples are so small and casting agents are insisting on such small sizes’.
‘‘You know how you read interviews where models insist that they eat a lot? Not true. The only way they can get that thin is to stop eating. They eat tissue paper to stave off the hunger pangs – literally ball it up and eat it.’’
Being sent to hospital is seen as just a part of the battle to get to the top, particularly for the Paris fashion shows, which require a look known as ‘‘Paris thin’’.
Clements recalled talking to a top model who was sharing a Paris apartment with another girl. ‘‘I asked her how sharing was going and she said, ‘Oh, it’s fine – she’s a fit model so she is mostly in hospital on a drip’.’’
Designers use so-called fit models as live mannequins to check the fit of clothes – and they are under pressure to be even thinner than other models.
Fashion designers and casting agents are blamed for leading the push for skinny models, ignoring fears over their health in order for the best look possible for their styles on the catwalk and in the pages of fashion magazines.
Clements blamed fashion designers and casting agents for leading the push for skinny models, but said fashion departments in newspapers and magazines were also at fault.
Even she, one of the most powerful editors in the fashion world, found her objections to drastically thin girls were ignored by her own fashion department. On one long shoot, Clements said she did not see the model eat once. By day three, the girl was so weak that she could hardly stand or open her eyes.