ENGLAND: Fashion world debates whether thin is still 'in' on the first day of London Fashion Week

Record ID: 197373

  • Title: ENGLAND: Fashion world debates whether thin is still 'in' on the first day of London Fashion Week
  • Date: 17th February 2007
  • Summary: (L!1) LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (FEBRUARY 11, 2007) (REUTERS) MODEL BACKSTAGE AT BEN DE LISI SHOW PICKING SANDWICH FROM TABLE, DISCARDING PART OF IT AND EATING THE REST POSTER GIVING ADVICE ON EATING DISORDERS, ABOVE TABLE OF FOOD MODEL HAVING HAIR DONE MODEL EATING APPLE MODEL DRINKING YOGHURT DRINK FASHION DESIGNER BEN DE LISI LOOKING AT MODELS (SOUNDBITE) (English) FASHION DESIGNER BEN DE LISI SAYING: "I use healthy girls who are elegant, show my clothes of beautifully and I'm happy with. And as long as they look good in their skin, feel right in their skin and they look good in my clothes, they'll be on my catwalk. End of story. This should be about British fashion, not about size zero." (SOUNDBITE) (English) HILARY RIVA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE BRITISH FASHION COUNCIL, SAYING: "Well we feel strongly that banning is not the right course to take. It's very discriminatory. You can't tell my looking at a model and you can't tell by weighing a model whether she is suffering from an eating disorder. And so it would be totally unfair to set a parameter which is just a benchmark for the average."
  • Embargoed: 4th March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Fashion
  • Reuters ID: LVAB9S21MKIEMYMISV2LCOMH63Z0
  • Story Text: Designer Ben de Lisi shows his autumn/winter collection on the first day of London Fashion Week, as the debate continues on whether ultra-thin models should be banned from the catwalk.
    More than 50 of the world's top fashion designers will be putting their creations to the catwalk test in London over the next week. But as the fashion pack descended on the capital on Sunday (February 11), it wasn't the shape of the clothes on the catwalk that everyone was talking about. It was the shape of the models wearing them.
    The issue of whether ultra-thin models are encouraging eating disorders in young women has been hotly debated in the fashion world over the last few months. Responding to calls for regulation, the British Fashion Council, which stages London Fashion Week, has issued guidelines to designers, urging them to use only healthy models to show their collections. Also, for the first time ever, eating disorders campaigners have been invited to attend some of the shows and distribute leaflets and a helpline number to models.
    But unlike their counterparts in Milan and Madrid, the London organisers stopped short of an outright ban on skinny models.
    "Well we feel strongly that banning is not the right course to take. It's very discriminatory. You can't tell my looking at a model and you can't tell by weighing a model whether she is suffering from an eating disorder. And so it would be totally unfair to set a parameter which is just a benchmark for the average," said Hilary Riva, chief executive of the British Fashion Council.
    Ben de Lisi, one of Britain's most commercially successful designers, said he did not hire too-thin models, and the 'size zero' debate didn't interest him. A U.S. clothing size zero is equivalent to a UK size 4, which critics have said is the size of an eight-year-old girl.
    "I use healthy girls who are elegant, show my clothes of beautifully and I'm happy with. And as long as they look good in their skin, feel right in their skin and they look good in my clothes, they'll be on my catwalk. End of story. This should be about British fashion, not about size zero," de Lisi said.
    De Lisi's show was a glamourous affair, with opulent fabrics and rich colours. The focus was on evening-wear and inspiration was drawn from the 1980s and from the novels F Scott Fitzgerald.
    London Fashion Week continues until February 16th, with autumn/winter collections from Paul Smith, Julien Macdonald and Marc Jacobs.
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