Don’t try to body-shame a supermodel. She’ll have you for breakfast

Woman eats croissant for breakfast. How very unremarkable. Except that the woman in question is Edie Campbell, the British supermodel who has worked with Chanel, Vogue, Dior and many more. And she is sharing this croissant-eating moment with the world in an act of defiance at the fact that she has just been told that she is “too big” to take the coveted opening and closing turn in a brand’s Milan fashion week show. This despite her having – according to her agency – a 32.5in bust, 24.5in waist and 35in hips, which equates to a dress size 8-10.

It had, she later clarified in a comment on Instagram, been “communicated to me that it had been difficult to fit me” and so she was relegated to walking somewhere in the middle of the show – despite what had been negotiated with her agent. Campbell noted, too, that this fashion label (which many have guessed the identity of by a process of elimination) is making clothes for women, not girls. I suppose this might be compared with being offered the keynote speech at a major conference and then being told that, instead, you’d be on a panel that would be a bit lost in the schedule.

Really, the fashion world does itself no favours sometimes. Until recently, the sort of treatment that Campbell received remained an unspoken, uncomfortable reality in the industry. Models in her position might have responded by scuttling off to start a juice cleanse, while fashion houses justified their behaviour by arguing that it’s only possible to make a sample in a certain size – and so if it doesn’t fit, well, that’s the model’s problem.

The public might have been dimly aware of such happenings, contributing to an image of fashion as an alienating, often cruel world in which they had little part to play. Which is a shame because the business of fashion is to sell the clothes which we must all wear, whatever our size, and it can be a truly joy-bringing exercise.

Now, however, we are in the age of the model as an outspoken personality. Rarely are models just models: they are campaigners, businesswomen, activists and philanthropists, too. One cannot be a model without a cause. Campbell, who holds a first-class degree in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute, has used her position to speak out before, writing an open letter in November 2017 as the Metoo movement was gathering pace, decrying the abuse of both male and female models. She devoured her croissant on Thursday morning and by Friday lunchtime she had walked in the Tod’s show, opened Etro and become an anti body-shaming heroine.

So the balance of power has shifted and the spotlight is now on the fashion houses. They can no longer hope to get away with this narrow, in every sense of the word, approach. It’s time to listen up – voices like Campbell’s are a powerful reality check.