Afternoon:
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The size zero debate has gone all quiet. No models have collapsed or died on the catwalk this year. The heroin-chic look is long dead and a lot of the girls do look reassuringly healthier. But it's all relative, isn't it? Even if we escape the madness of size zero (a chilling UK size 4 in UK), we still face the tyranny of size 6 and size 8.
Never was this more in evidence than at Stella's Gym this week. For her sportswear collection with adidas, Stella McCartney set up an exercise hall at the Royal Horticultural Society, complete with trampolines, treadmills and a victory lap by Olympic gold medallists Victoria Pendleton and Allyson Felix. None of the women wearing the togs were emaciated models. They were ultra-healthy athletes and gymnasts.
It's a serious departure for Planet Fashion where clothes are designed not by grown-up women in their own likeness but by men who don't find women remotely attractive. The majority of (mostly male) designers do not celebrate the womanly body: they mock it, favouring tiny, barely 16-year-old frames.
Even Roland Mouret, celebrated for his “feminine” silhouette, designs for only the most svelte: his clothes create the illusion of curves, instead of accommodating real flesh. Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano both trade their muses in seasonally for, literally, smaller, younger models. Once a girl grows womanly hips or curves, she is booted off the catwalk, squeezed out of the sample sizes.
In this climate, Stella's “real woman” stance is radical. But it's still a warped message. It's OK not to be a boyish size zero. But only if you look super-athletic instead.
Is this really the best we can come up with to counter the androgynous aesthetic championed by male designers? Of course, I appreciate the effort. And it is certainly more than anyone else in fashion is doing. But I also wanted to scream, strip off naked and run around Stella's Gym, yelling, “This is what size 14 looks like — on a good day. Get over it.”
Naturally, fashion is about aspiration. It's about selling the dream of youth and beauty. But would it really be so utterly terrifying or impractical to see just one or two healthy women who are size 10 or 12 modelling these clothes? The adidas range of clothes goes up to size 16.
Women that size work out (I know. I'm one of them). It always amazes me that fashion calls itself a creative industry and yet not one single designer is daring enough to even experiment with showing clothes on women who look like women, neither boyish nor Olympian.
Replacing size zero with an Amazonian standard is ultimately pointless. Granted, it's a progress of sorts (at least the Olympians are not about to drop dead of anorexia) but it's just another unattainable extreme. And one that is dozens of inches away from the wobbly norm. Stella's Gym was the teensiest of moves in the right direction — but no way did it go far enough.
Reader views (1)
To right!!!
I love fashion...but I am sick to death of the male designers vision of 'woman' it simply misses the mark and messes with our heads.
- Louise Foster, London, 18/09/2008 16:55
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