Fashion for Every Shapes: The Fashion that Drive Healthy Modelling Industry

The fashion industry was stunned, when the two French biggest fashion brand’s owner Kering and LVMH, declared that they would not use the zero size model anymore. It is as a response to criticism that fashion industry encourages eating disorders to the models. This commitment was announced on September this year, which immediately invited a long debate. 

Kering owns Gucci and Saint Laurent, while Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior owned by LVMH. These two luxury fashion groups have banned excessively thin models from casting requirements, for their catwalk shows and ad campaigns worldwide. This ban applies to models with the size of below 34 (France) which is similar with the size 6 (Britain), 0 (US), or XXS (international).

There is no record when was the first time the fashion industry began to use only bone-thin models. In 2013, the former editor of Australian Vogue Kirstie Clements wrote for Guardian about thin-obsessed culture in fashion industry. 

“In the late 80s and early 90s, beauties such as Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigová and Claudia Schiffer look positively curvaceous compared to the sylphs of today. There was a period in the last three years when some of the girls on the runways were so young and thin. And they have become smaller since the early 90s,” she wrote.

Size zero is the main requirement on fashion industry in 21st century. Having very thin and tall body, also shape face and hips are the biggest tickets to work on the modelling industry. The difference is, today the models that have the body shape like those needed by the fashion industry, get the shape unnaturally. They hurt their bodies to keep the shapes, like choosing not to eat when they are starving. The disease caused by those kind of eating disorder, is the reason for some group to criticize this size zero rules.

Long before the charter of Kering and LVMH, Madrid Fashion Week and Milan Fashion Show banned size zero models after the death of Luisel Ramos from anorexia in 2006. The year after, the British Fashion Council established guidelines for fashion industry to use healthy models, while the government of Italy set up regulation and began to introduced larger sizes models.


Giorgio Armani eliminated ultra-thin models to support against anorexia. Victoria Beckham barred 12 models from appearing in her New York Fashion Week runway show in 2010, as she wants her fashion be modelled by healthy girls who look realistic to encourage positive image. In 2011, model Katie Green launched the “Say No to Size Zero” campaign to pushed the UK legislation to require health checkups for models before assignments. While having a body mass index (BMI) of no less than 18.4 is a must for models in Israel, by the law in 2012.

Since the list of parties that should be responsible for the disease caused by the modelling industry --starting from talent scouts, modeling agencies, designers, fashion editors, photographers, etc; stakeholders now have better attention to the models. They also have similar agreements about the importance of making fashion as the products needed by everyone, for every customers with all types of body shapes, sizes, and heights

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Written for a two-days-fashion-articles challenge.
Picture grabbed from here.