Skin-and-bones Victoire goes from zero to hero
THE spring/summer catwalk season of 2009 may not have been a landmark month for many, but it is firmly etched into the mind of Victoire Dauxerre.
Then 18, she was one of the most successful 20 models at Paris Fashion Week, booked for couture powerhouses from Dior to Chanel, Valentino to Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga to Givenchy, and Italian Vogue had called to ask her to be the face on its cover.
But beneath the glamour she was crumbling. In the eight months that she had been modelling, the 1.77m Parisienne had dropped from a size 8 to a size 2. Her desire to meet modelling standards had led to an eating disorder.
She survived solely on apples and liquids, using laxatives and enemas daily to keep her weight down. Her hair was brittle and falling out. Her periods had stopped. She was hallucinating and fainting. Her skeleton, she later found out, was like that of a 70-year-old.
“It was the worst time of my life,” she says. After months like a barely functioning “robot” because of hunger, and exhausted from walking everywhere to burn calories, Dauxerre quit, saying no to that Vogue cover.
She started eating. But her problems continued. “When I stopped [modelling], I felt so lonely and ashamed, because I hated my body. I also felt like I’d failed as a model.
“I cried all the time and didn’t leave my room. I was imprisoned in my body. I became a size 12, after being a size 2, and I felt fat. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill the loneliness and the pain.”
So she tried to kill herself when she was 18 and woke up in a hospital, surrounded by her family. She was in a rehabilitation clinic for three months.
Six years on, Dauxerre’s autobiographical book, Size Zero, is a big hit in France. She wishes she had read a book like this before she began modelling. “I had no idea what it would be like. I want to protect girls who want to [model], because it can be really dangerous.”
Dauxerre blames modelling for her eating disorder. When she was scouted aged 17, she says, she had no body image issues and was a slim size 8.
Her agency said she had to be a size 2 to work. To fit into the clothes she had to lose 10kg. “They want you down to the bone. They deliberately scout you when you’re 16, 17. You’re naive and can be manipulated. They ask you to meet insane criteria.”
France passed a law two years ago on using models with healthy BMIs, but Dauxerre says: “It’s even worse now. Girls are skinnier and skinnier.”
Now a size 10, and campaigning against “dangerous” exploitation. she says the industry “should promote strong, healthy and beautiful women”.
“It’s still ‘We want to see your bones’. The modelling industry diminishes women. It needs to stop.” — ©The Daily Telegraph, London