When Brylie Fowler was choosing models for a fashion spread in the second edition of her London-based magazine, Plastique, she settled on a girl whose portfolio indicated that she had a healthy, athletic frame.
But Ms. Fowler, who grew up in Oakville, Ont., said the model who arrived had a 23-inch waist and was so tiny that she resembled a baby deer as she struck the exaggerated poses of high fashion. The resulting photographs of her in a Dolce & Gabbana gown, Ms. Fowler said, were too frightening to print.
And so the magazine decided to use a common industry technique, airbrushing the image before it went to press to change the girl's appearance.
Except in this case, it made her bigger.
“It doesn't look good,” Ms. Fowler said yesterday of emaciated frames. “And I'm in the business of making things look good.”
The fashion industry is having a similar image crisis these days. It has been accused of promoting extreme thinness for decades, finally leading several countries to take legislative action.
This week, France introduced a law that would make it a crime to “incite” people to thinness on websites, magazines and in advertisements. In 2006, Spain announced that models must have a minimum body mass index, or height-to-weight ratio, of 18, or be banned from the runways.
And some haute couture heavyweights seem to be taking note. In the April issue of Vogue, the Prada-wearing devil herself, Anna Wintour, encouraged designers to “consider athleticism and vitality as assets in the wearing of great fashion.”
But is the fashion world simply paying pouty lip service or is the industry that gave us skinny jeans and standardized size zero really ready to declare that thin is out?
“People don't even really believe it; there's not any fear,” said Ms. Fowler, who began her career at the Paris magazine Citizen K. “Is this law really going to change anorexic girls out there? Are we not going to take photos of Mary-Kate Olsen?”
Skepticism of the law and its impact has been expressed by fashion insiders around the globe.
French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier was quoted as saying: “This kind of problem cannot be resolved with laws,” a sentiment repeated in Canada.
In October, a group of fashion designers from Milan, Italy, attended the L'Oréal Fashion Week in Toronto and asked Fashion Design Council of Canada president Robin Kay to sign a pledge not to use skinny models in the shows. She refused.
“I said I couldn't do it,” she recalled yesterday. “I can have an opinion, but I'm not going to sign that. I have not seen a need for it on our runways.”
Jeanne Beker, host of Fashion Television, said she understands the impetus behind the French legislation, but not how the government plans to enforce it.
“I find it very strange that people are trying to legislate an aesthetic,” she said. “We don't want to promote unhealthy images, but who's to say what's really healthy? How would it look if people over a certain weight couldn't be shown?”
Ms. Beker believes the French law, if it is ultimately passed, would be a form of censorship. But more than that, she suggests that eagerness to blame fashion for eating disorders is a cultural witch hunt akin to demonizing gangster rap or violent video games.
Fashion is a business, she said, but also a fantasy, one that is produced at great effort with the explicit purpose of being non-representative.
“These images are not to be taken literally,” she said. “At every photo shoot there are 50 people scurrying around trying to get that girl to look like that. It's a fairy tale.”
