the body of the fashion industry

With personal experience around the subject of body image and appearances, I have found a great and almost natural sympathy about the controversial subject – ‘The body of the Fashion Industry’. We’ve come to accept the thin or ever-so-slight silhouette but most of us don’t have the understanding around the reasons why we have become fixated on this specific body shape to communicate designs and clothing.

There is a black hole in the fashion industry about the ‘ideal’ body size and body image. It is advertised and recommended to society, many of who have mental health issues, a low self esteem or are self-conscious.  From Fashion Designers to family and friends, the body image in the Fashion Industry has been a controversial subject; it has been a never-ending discussion with a contrast of negatives and positives within the subject.

Models are our canvases for fashion design, we need them for fittings, we need them for a realistic vision of the clothes we buy and some how we have promoted and become natural to the sight of ever-so-slight, pre-pubescent women.

Many of us don’t really understand why or how we started using models, we don’t look further than the mannequin and catwalks with
these questions but it is important for us women and men to look past the negatives and accept the ideal body image in the fashion industry as something inessential to our lives.

The word Model came from the Middle French word ‘modelle’ used to describe people posing for a portrait. In the late 1800’s modelling appeared in newspaper ads after the invention of the camera.

Haute Couture designer Charles Worth had his wife, Marie Vernet, as his ‘live mannequin’ and made modelling an established profession.

To be a model in the 1950s it was important to be known within the fashion industry obviously family links or relatives and not to be a casual person on the street – which is quite similar now in the 21^st century.

London became a Fashion hub in the 1960’s – 80’s with the help of the iconic Twiggy and the wages for modelling became more generous.  

The 1990s is known as the decade of the “supermodel,” and their famous faces were everywhere. Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymour were, and remain, some of the most recognizable supermodels of the time. When Victoria’s Secret and Sports Illustrated rose in popularity, so too did the demand for sexier and curvier models.

The 2000s was the digital age and transformed modelling for the fashion industry with social media. This made models more involved with the public and now it is very hard to not find a recognisable face online.

Brands are now aware of the idea of communicating with society, with these social media accounts comes with the decision and influence on whether brands and designers will hire which model.

With the knowledge of the beginning of modeling, we still don’t really know or why the body shape has transformed and revolutionized over the years and how it has influenced the Fashion industry as well as society.

Our ancestors inhabited environments characterised by food shortages and individuals who were able to quickly increase their body mass may have had an advantage in terms of health and even fertility. The archaeological record of Venus figurines –(such as the Venus of Willendorf from the late Stone Age) – that suggests that between ten and 100,000 years ago, the ideal female figure was robust and round.

This was the case up until the 19th century. Artists like Titian, Rembrandt, and Rubens all portrayed the ideal woman as voluptuous and round. Venus, the goddess of beauty, was typically portrayed with a round face and a pear-shaped body.

In the 19^th century the idealized image changed in Western Europe. The women had slight shapes, corseted waists and sloped shoulders. The ultimate beauty was defined by women’s appearance of glamorous gowns and spectacular accessories – they were big-boned and heavy chested and were popular among men during this time.

In the early 1900s women’s appearances were defined by the name ‘Gibson Girl’ – a soft supple, dainty female with a frame defined by a swan bill corset. 

In the 1920’s, there was a big shift with the women’s silhouette, which was slender and leaner in build; influenced by the ‘Flapper’ trend - the increase for women’s freedom e.g. being able to vote and working.

By the 1940’s-1950’s the female figure took a complete turn and can only be described by the iconic Marilyn Monroe. The leggy, curvy blonde was the pinnacle of attractiveness during these years In the 60’s. However elongating the legs, tucking in the waist and enhancing the breasts were becoming idealised by men for ‘pin-up’ girl posters and had somehow influenced society to shame the women who were ‘skinny’, describing them as hopeless in romantic pursuits.

The 1960’s introduced the psychedelic rock star look, hyper -sexualizing the male form, with the likes of Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger popularizing the longhaired, scrawny, feminine rocker charm. This time came the desire for more fashion and style, appearing more as a silhouette describing the changes in society. The influence of drugs, smoking and ‘partying all night’ may have been a significance in the evolution of the female body shape but with men as influencers came slender and emaciated looks for women. The body image icons during this decade were the tiny models Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn both who are not natural that shape.

The ‘heroin chic-90’s’ brought a new type of mode, - wispy and slender. It is the time when perhaps unhealthy and the obsession with thinness began. However, with the pressure and influence of social media came a new shift to revert societal standards for female body types.

Taking a good, hard look at the fashion industry reveals some powerful answers to the question of why models are so thin. These answers so powerful that they collapse whatever validity we had previously ascribed to thinness in the fashion world in the first place. They demonstrate that the fashion industry treats and depicts women as less-than human. Less-than-human is not valid. Less-than-human is not worth our attention and adoration. Less-than-human is something to reject and overcome, not something to aspire to.

Models are made to fit clothes and not made to fit the models, they are referred as hangers for fashion designers; their primary aim is to sell products to retailers not the public. Their designs are meant to drape and hang on the models and the longer, more flowy, or better draped an article of clothing is, the more likely a retail executive’s eyes will pop out of his head. For mesmerising catwalks, designers use these thin and tall models in order for a more neater and pleasing catwalk show. It is a distraction if there were to be more curvier models because naturally the viewers would observe how the clothes fit the model- if it’s flattering or not.  

Understanding the way that designers use such models makes you realise that they may just be using them because its easier to create collections that will instantly look more elegant on the catwalk and not having to worry about any curves, lumps or bumps - So clothing is designed for its own appealing shape, not for how it fits actual human beings.

‘Fit models’ are the first canvases for designers when fittings come around.

The fit model maintains a precise, tiny shape that fits to exact measurements. This enables her to be the first mannequin in the production line, the tiny size—or the “skeleton” in the words of once Vogue Australia editor Kirstie Clements–off of which all of the larger sizes are modelled. Clements remarks in an excerpt from her book The Vogue Factor published in the Guardian in July 2013  that one model described her roommate as “’ being a fit model, so she is hospital on a drip a lot of the time.’” Executives in the industry often confide the same perilous status of their own models to Clements.

The only way for the fashion designers collections to shine is for the models to disappear – if they runways showed curvy, healthy, vibrant women it would “upstage” the designers’ creations.

The fit, or fitting, model is a vital but rarely talked about role in the fashion industry. A living, breathing mannequin, a fitting model tests out garments to make sure the cut and proportions are right, and helps designers, pattern cutters and garment technologists identify problems that could impact sales, such as shallow pockets, or armholes cut too tight.

Fitting models reflect the proportions of a brand’s target market, rather than an aspirational image of the brand.

This aspect in the fashion industry is really important but it’s problematic because its drastic aesthetic preferences perpetuate the myth of leanness as a necessary component of beauty far and wide.

It’s important for women at any age to understand the reasons and explanation of the body image in the fashion industry. We need to recognise the information behind the catwalks and behind the social media that endorse the ideal and sometimes unnatural body image.

Having an open mind about the issues of the “glorified” body image in the fashion industry may come with the acceptance that the industry is manipulative and some how unrealistic, almost a fantasy to get us consumers to desire such icons; something not natural is more attractive to us, it could just be how we communicate creativity.

I have just found, as I write this piece, that The Business of Fashion online website has just published an article about the 'Fit Model' and what its really like be them in the Fashion Industry. 

This piece is exactly what young women and men need to read. It will make them understand how the body image of the fashion industry operates and how the designs are fitted on these 'Fit models'. I could write my own explanation of this article but they have exclusive knowledge and feedback from the women who are or know the 'Fit Models'. 

Its their best article yet explaining and justifying the reasons of the models we have today. 

-  https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/from-mannequin-to-muse-being-a-fashion-fitting-model

Another and most recent headline about the forces of a specific body shape have flared and this is something I really need to share on this blog. It helps people wonder why and may even make them aware of how they see themselves or how they see the models that they aspire to be. 

https://www.facebook.com/ulrikkehoyer/posts/10211363794962286

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUPjdUOgZSm/?taken-by=pandorasykes