After Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston succumbed to anorexia and died in 2006 at age 21, the fashion world received a wake-up call: Their standards of beauty had pressured models and may have encouraged girls all over the world to develop eating disorders and something had to be done about it.
But for Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, long overdue reforms in the fashion industry haven’t come fast enough, and she brought this message to Boston on Monday night.
The 13th Annual Public Forum, “Health Matters: Weight and Wellness in the World of Fashion,” organized by the Harris Center for Education and Advocacy in Eating Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital, invited not only Wintour, but also American designer Michael Kors and Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova to discuss the current efforts of the fashion world in preventing eating disorders.
The panel, moderated and led by HCEAED Director Dr. David Herzog, presented to an audience of about 500 people at the Harvard Business School’s Burden Auditorium.
The international industry had first acted in September 2006, when organizers of the Madrid Fashion Week banned unhealthily thin models from the catwalk. The Council of Fashion Designers of America began its health initiative in January 2007 to promote the well-being of models both psychologically and physically, and to raise awareness of the psychiatric disorder affecting more than eight million Americans.
The CFDA is now encouraging a minimum age requirement for models, a limit on working hours and a ban on tobacco and alcohol, and is pushing for an alert system between designers and agents so models showing the first signs of anorexia or bulimia can be treated, Wintour said.
However the issue cannot only be solved by awareness, she said.
“We want healthy-looking girls, the readers want healthy-looking girls.” Wintour said. “Except it is not always easy to dress them.”
And by that, Wintour means the clothes literally don’t fit, forcing models to lose weight in search of work.
The panel explained that for photo shoots and fashion shows, designers send samples that are most of the time ridiculously small, coming in size 0 and sometimes, even 00.
Another problem for the fashion industry is the young age at which models are brought to the runway, the panel said.
“There are young girls, and I mean girls, not the fashion euphemism for models, that are hired on the runway,” Wintour said. “These kids on the runway have a short lifespan, they can be as young as 17 and 18 when their careers are over.”
Vodianova, 28, who is married and a mother of three, confessed to having an eating disorder she developed after her pregnancy in an attempt to start modeling again.
“After I gave birth I lost a lot of weight, and under the pressure of the industry I realized much later I had an eating disorder,” she said. “I went to therapy, I’m probably breaking my own boundaries but I recognized I had a problem.”
Miuccia Prada, designer and owner of Prada, Miuccia Prada, and Louis Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs have featured veteran models in their latest fashion shows, including 46-year-old Elle McPherson and curvy 25-year-old Victoria’s Secret’s model Doutzen Kroes.
Kors, who pledged Monday night to only hire models aged 16 and older, said that regardless of age he does not hire models who show signs of any eating disorders.
“We don’t book her,” he said. “You shouldn’t support it or encourage it or support it, just say no.”
Kors recalled a time when an older loyal model showed up one year weighing “half of what she used to weigh,” and as she walked down the catwalk, he and his team realized she was so thin that her backbone had actually bruised her skin.
At the end of the lecture, speakers received questions from the audience, including from a high school senior student who asked Vodianova, now healthy and still thin, “How do you feel about women who aren’t naturally thin and look at your pictures?”
After a long sigh, Vodianova confessed it was a hard question.
“I know I’m hated by many women,” she said. “But they must see the positive in them and not compare. They have to think one day they will also be successful.”
Boston University graduate student Lauren Richards asked Wintour how aware fashion leaders really were of the problem and if they knew how many women had eating disorders.
“I think everybody’s eyes are wide open right now, more than ever before” Wintour said.
Vogue’s April issue features its ninth annual “Shape” issue and includes an interview with Kate Dillon, a plus-size supermodel who has also recovered from an eating disorder, Wintour said.
“It’s not only a hope, everyone at Vogue has made it their intention to praise different body types,” she said.
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