British Vogue editor to designers: Restore the human!

Light-as-air models forcefed via airbrush. British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman pushes back on haute couture's Cadaver Love.

Shulman recently wrote a letter to fashion designers requesting that they stop designing for “size-0” models. She says she’s tired of retouching models’ jutting bones. Translation: We’d like to at least give the impression that our models still have fully functioning hearts beating away beneath those showy ribcages.

Who knows, maybe Shulman goes further in her letter (we haven’t been able to get our hands on a copy yet). And sure, she’s taken a positive step, even if it falls short of a call to vanquish eating disorders. Maybe hers is more like a long text to “Go ahead and indulge now and then. For every meal you skip, reward yourself with a ridiculously large cup of coffee--with milk!” It’s anyone’s guess whether Shulman will succeed in persuading designers to single-digitize their collections. Probably best for everyone involved if she does. In the past several years, at least two models have died of anorexia or complications thereof. And that’s just counting the ones who got high-profile press coverage.

Speaking of the press, most of the blogs that covered the Shulman story wound up focusing on one point: Models who starve themselves in order to stuff their already waifish bodies into teensy weensy clothes inevitably inspire girls and women to follow suit. This results in illness, suffering and sometimes death. It’s certainly an important angle to cover. But let’s put aside the eating disorder discussion for a moment and talk clothes. Will the average woman on the street ever get to experience the thrill of scoring a Prada knock-off in size 14? (And yes, obesity is a concern. However, it is possible to wear size 14 and be healthy--just as it’s possible to wear size 8 and nurse a healthy nicotine habit. Or not.) Featuring slightly-less-skinny models in your pages is one thing, convincing designers to create for the average woman is another. If you’re an American woman “of size” (meaning size 12 and up) chances are it’s tough to locate fashionable clothes that fit.

Anyway, back to Shulman, whose airbrushing talk has given me an idea.
Body paint. (The non-toxic kind.) So what if we can’t find clothes we like that actually fit us. We'll just pick up a brush, swirl it around in some trendy Peacock Blue paint and voila! We've developed a new skill! And instead of wasting our hard-earned woman-money on clothes that suck, we’ll deposit it in our savings account. Color us model citizens--creative, resourceful and thrifty. No retouch required.