ON STYLE By CHRISTINA BINKLEY
Wasn't Skinny Supposed to Be Out of Fashion?February 28, 2008; Page D1
On Tuesday morning in Paris, as the fashion elite were gathering at the Balenciaga show, 17-year-old model Ali Michael was heading home to the U.S. far earlier than anticipated.
Miss Michael was last season's model du jour, and she looks wraithlike, with a still-developing body and a 23-inch waist. But this season, after gaining five pounds, Miss Michael was told by casting directors for the runway shows that her legs were too plump, according to her mother, Mary Ann Michael, who travels with her daughter to appointments and shows. And so, after doing a string of major supermodel shows in September, Miss Michael snared only the Yohji Yamamoto show in Paris this time around. After walking the runway, her eyes blackened with corpse-like makeup, she said she was sad to be leaving but grateful to Mr. Yamamoto. "This show is special," she added.
Nobody here has been talking about last year's skinny-model cause célèbre, when a few fashion-industry leaders in Milan and Madrid began talking about instituting body-mass-index requirements after the starvation deaths of several models. This year, the models are just as thin -- if anything, they look thinner. This was particularly visible in Paris, which sets modes for clothes and fashion shows around the world.
"I think it's gotten worse," said Nina Garcia, fashion director at Elle magazine and a judge on cable television's "Project Runway," while we waited to see Balenciaga. "In the fashion industry, the models are getting thinner and thinner, yet as a culture, we're getting fatter and fatter."
The Paris runways this week have been as flamboyant as ever, and exceedingly thin models are a big part of the show. Jean-Paul Gaultier assured his continued reign as fashion's enfant terrible by creating a PETA nightmare of fur. Fashion's most famous bony models walked the runway draped in fur that was designed to shock: The heads of the foxes and other creatures went swinging down the catwalk -- eyes, noses, ears, feet, tails and all. The show ended with wild laughter over the sound system -- the huge wicked laugh of a madman.
Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière opened his show with two demure little black dresses that would look awkward on anything but a rail-thin frame. They stood out from the body with exaggerated hips, hiding models' protruding collar bones with a look like armor. Dior went 1960s-Mrs.-Robinson with a finely tailored collection that will make people rush for a martini and cigarette -- and the models, with heavily teased hair and wildly exaggerated eye makeup, were little more than highly stylized hangers for the clothes.
Several designers did grapple with modern concerns. Issey Miyake's show was an eerie ode to love in an apocalyptic age -- he blended jeans, made on special looms that weave fabric to look spray-painted, with fine black suits, run through with understated platinum and gold thread.
Mr. Miyake is right: War, famine, drought and global warming trouble us; we need look no further than the spring flowers blooming in February in Paris to know that change is afoot.
Yet what of the 21st-century problem on his own runway? Mr. Miyake deserves credit for hiring several models of color, but he seemed nonplussed when I asked him about weight. He chose models who are "just suitable for our clothes," he repeated several times.
Bodies Formed to Fit Clothes
So we have bodies being formed to fit clothes, rather than clothes designed to fit bodies.
Model Ali Michael.
"If you look at the girls, they are not beautiful like models were 20 years ago," says Jimmy Pihet, spokesman for the Federation Française de la Couture, which oversees Paris fashion shows. "The girls are thin, they have strange faces. ... At first, you look at them and you're not sure if they're beautiful or disgusting."
This has come about as the fashion industry continues its attempt to seem different while moving in lockstep. Even Viktor & Rolf, who like to make fun of fashion and built slogans like "NO!" and "WOW!" into clothes in Tuesday's show, stop short of certain revolutions. Everywhere on the runways, it's apparent that the emaciated look is still "in."
Mr. Pihet says that France has had laws since 1990 requiring models who are under 18 to obtain health certificates from doctors, and that the Federation receives complaints that the laws are too strong. But he claims that models aren't role models for young girls -- that actresses play that role.
This is a contested point. As any parent of an adolescent girl can tell you, fashion magazines become dog-eared as girls study them for beauty tips.
Thinner Than Twiggy
But it isn't fair to just blame a few designers. In the U.S., France and Italy, casting directors, fashion designers, show overseers and fashion magazines move en masse, and no one is using models who look like models did 20 years ago. In her day, the aptly named Twiggy seemed wildly thin -- but she would look oversized on today's runways.
It's hard to imagine Miss Michael, a willowy, 5-foot-9-inch teenager, being told her legs are too fat. Last season, Miss Michael made herself sick keeping her weight down, said her mother. Miss Michael's reward was to be heralded as the next supermodel.
She opened Lanvin in Paris a year ago and walked the runways of Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Lacroix, Chanel, John Galliano, Dior, Rodarte and others. She appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Teen Vogue and W magazines and was personally congratulated by Vogue's Anna Wintour.
Choices Over Dieting
It's possible to become anesthetized to the models' looks. With heavy makeup, it's also easy to overlook how young many of them are. Miss Michael was "discovered" in Texas at 15.
Her mother, a stunning woman who was once a model herself, said her daughter's model friends have struggled to get thinner in recent months and that her daughter, worried about her health, chose not to starve herself.
"Our bags are packed," said Mrs. Michael sadly as she and her daughter prepared to fly home. Still, she said that she felt a sense of relief that her child was getting out of the fast lane of fashion, at least for now. "I have a really good, good daughter," she said.
Write to Christina Binkley at
christina.binkley@wsj.com
I used a lot of zippers and patches and even the Hell’s Angels emblem to create this collection. I also used leather, knits, wool, and even a silk jersey. My favorite aspect of the collection is the “tattoo tights” used in two of the looks. I seriously want to get those made... how cool is that?
