Boycott The Bag

Can anorexic models be banned?

Women's Wear Daily thinks that anorexic models may be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. "Under the protections of the act," WWD said, "a candidate cannot be passed over for a job only because he or she has a disability, if an employer could accommodate the person with a reasonable amount of adjustments."

It's amazing how desperate the fashion industry is to find some way to accommodate its preference for size 0 models.  First, they argue that it's not the designers' fault, it's the stylists, or the models, or maybe the modeling agencies.  When that argument fails, Vogue steps up with a panel of fashion insiders discussing eating disorders and the CFDA offers voluntary guidelines.  And then WWD raises the specter of the ADA to an industry that has never given much thought to addressing the rights of minorities or the disabled.

When I see a model rolling down the runway in a wheelchair at the next Calvin Klein show, maybe I'll feel for the designers who worry about the legality of excluding anorexics.

Fashion designers weigh in on skinny models

While leafing through TIME's Style & Design issue, I spotted a few choice quotes about the fashion/eating disorders controversy:

We don't see anorexic.  The girls are skinny.  They have skinny bones.

-- Karl Lagerfeld

I have never liked thin girls, and I have never made them go on the catwalk.

-- Giorgio Armani

I wanted to lose a few kilos recently, as I'm heavier than I was 20 or 30 years ago.  It's really convenient to be thinner.  I didn't eat for a day and a half, and the scales moved a little.

-- Vivienne Westwood

Fashion is not the cause of juvenile problems.  There are other ways to take care of our young generation:  stop showing half-naked starlets on television, ban silicone implants if one is not at least 25, for example.

-- Roberto Cavalli

Let's not become fanatics.

--  Diane von Furstenberg

Another reason not to buy D&G

Is it art, or is it misogyny?  Whatever it is, Dolce & Gabbana might want to reconsider their ad campaigns.

Do the women who buy D&G's products respond favorably to the rape fantasy depicted in this ad?  Do the designers really understand their customers?  Here's an interview with Stefano Gabbana that suggests the designers are out of touch.

Deluded designers, Crazy industry

In the Washington Post, Robin Givhan reflects on how ridiculous and indulged fashion designers can be.  Givhan writes:

Once a designer manages to lasso a financial backer with deep pockets -- certainly no easy feat -- the guys in the suits mostly keep quiet...Investors tend to be enamored of the glamorous aura that surrounds fashion. They equate eccentricity with genius. They mistake bad design with esoteric intellectualism. And they confuse a likable and charming personality with someone who actually knows what he's doing.

Unfortunately, for consumers, this means we are confronted with clothes we would never wear (see Alexandre Herchcovitch's garbage bag dress at right) in sizes too small for the average woman.  The designers fuck with our minds, using size 0 models who bear more resemblance to clothes hangers, than to prospective customers.

It is a puzzle how so many of these designers are permitted to stay in business, when it is apparent that they have little regard for the women who are supposed to wear their clothes.

If the contestants on "Project Runway" had each been given a garbage bag, surely, they would have made something more attractive than the embellished sac on the right?  How did such an ugly dress pass through whatever reviews take place, to find its way onto the Fashion Week runway?  I hope it was a case of design exhaustion, rather than dress enthusiasm.  The latter suggests delusion, while the former, merely sloppiness.

Oh well, in only six months, we'll have a chance to relive these fashion adventures.  We'll learn if the CFDA guidelines have encouraged the use of healthier and heavier models, and we'll see if the green garbage bags for fall/winter have been replaced by white garbage bags for spring/summer.  Progress.

Too many Gucci bags sold in 2006

Looks like there were lots of Gucci bags beneath Xmas trees this year.  Marketwatch reports on PPR's fourth quarter financial results (PPR is Gucci's parent company), and notes:

Growth at the luxury unit was driven by solid gains at its top brands, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, as well as a 66% rise in sales at Bottega Veneta, which benefited from continued rapid expansion in its core Japanese market.

Bottega Veneta also recently took its first step into China, opening a store in Shanghai and plans a further 10 stores worldwide in 2007.

Shares in the group climbed 3.2% higher in Paris. PPR's shares had been under pressure ahead of the results, losing around 6% since the start of January.

The Gucci brand enjoyed strong sales in the U.S. and Japan, where it benefited from a new flagship store in Tokyo.

"All the luxury goods brands continued to outperform their markets, due to the talent of the designers and the brands strong positioning," said Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman and chief executive in a statement.

Gucci is also repositioning its range of watches by increasing their quality and selling price, though the impact from this initiative likely won't be seen until the second half of 2007, the company told analysts on a conference call.

Gucci's new Tokyo store is helping spur bag sales, and clearly, using anorexic models hasn't hurt the company.  An absence of health considerations infiltrates the brand.  It's easy to imagine one of their underfed models doing lines of coke instead of eating a cheeseburger.

   

Why promote such impossible and unhealthy notions of beauty when all you really want to do is sell more handbags?  Duh...because it works.

Gisele Bundchen is an idiot

Gisele Bundchen demonstrates why she is a supermodel, and not a rocket scientist.  In an interview with O Globo newspaper, she says the following:

“I never suffered from this problem (anorexia), because I had a very strong family base. Parents are responsible, not the fashion industry.”

“Everybody knows that the norm in fashion is thin, but excuse me, there are people born with the right genes for this profession.”

According to Wikipedia, Bundchen's mother encouraged her to begin modeling when she was only 13 years old.  Gisele left home at 16 to move to New York to begin her modeling career in earnest.  Gisele points to the fact that her classmates called her "Olive Oyl" to demonstrate how skinny she has been all her life and to assert that genetics play a role in her continued thinness. 

At 5'11" and 127 lbs, Gisele has a BMI of 17.7, which means she would be considered underweight by NIH standards, and this would exclude her from modeling in Madrid or Sao Paulo.  Fortunately for Gisele, all it would take is a hamburger and fries (i.e., two more pounds) and she'd have a BMI of 18. 

Who knows if Gisele is lucky to be both underweight and healthy.  However, for her to assert that eating disorders exist solely because of family influence is ignorant and absurd and contrary to the opinions of experts on eating disorders.  It is even contrary to what the CFDA believes.  She has been called selfish and arrogant, and these criticisms seem warranted.

Big Bags Bite Back

What's the best thing to happen to chiropractors in a long time?  The introduction of oversized handbags.  The NY Times interviewed several chiropractors and massage therapists about the impact of huge handbags, and found the following:

“At the end of the day, handbags are one of the biggest culprits for back pain right now,” she said. “For a year patients have been coming in to me with these giant purses and complaints of soreness. This will keep happening until the trend dies down.”

Several fashion victims were interviewed, and they were uniformly insistent on carrying their huge bags, even if the bags made their lives more difficult and painful:

“I’ve suffered major back, neck and shoulder pain from carrying heavy bags,” said Kimberly Whalen, 37, a literary agent in New York who recently bought the ubiquitous black Chanel carryall, which more than one fashion Web site has compared to a trash bag. “I’ve even had M.R.I.’s and cortisone treatments to help alleviate the problem.”

Sasha Charnin Morrison, 42, the fashion director at US Weekly, admitted that her bags are so large that she often gets stuck in revolving doors. “They may not be practical, but so what?” she said. “When it comes to fashion, being practical is a huge bore.”

The spine experts at the American Chiropractic Association recommend that a bag (and its contents) weigh less than 10% of its owners bodyweight.  So....pass on the Yves Saint Laurent Muse.  Skip the Miu Miu Coffer.  And run from the Chloé Paddington which comes complete with enormous metal padlock.

If you're thinking about being a fashion-victim and carrying a huge designer bag, remember that it's not just your wallet that will suffer.

What Next: Gucci Diapers and Skinny Babies?

What does it mean to be a kid?  According to Jim Taylor, a marketing expert who recently studied teenagers' preferences, "Having a Gucci scarf is part of being a kid today."

An article in today's LA Times explores the heightened awareness that young kids have for luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton.  The owner of Kitson, a high end LA store, jokingly calls these young consumers "ABC Girls", for Armani, Blahnik and Chanel -- since they wear everything branded.

Why is there such an awareness?  Some of it is the parents, who dress their kids up in designer clothes as a way of showing their affluence.  However, much of it is the media.  The kids read US Magazine or Teen Vogue or see Nicole Richie carrying a particular handbag, and they learn to identify and covet particular brands.

A Gucci scarf seems pretty harmless.  Likewise, a modest Gucci bag.  Why worry when a 'tween gets chic?  Unfortunately, these items are the fashion equivalent of "gateway drugs".  The marketers hope that the 'tween won't stop at the scarf.  That as she ages, she'll stay loyal to the brand and keep acquiring new pieces.  If the marketing of these labels weren't so toxic, this wouldn't be problematic. 

However, do we really want a 12 year old aspiring to look like this?

 

Is it any wonder that the incidence of eating disorders is increasing in "younger age groups, as young as 7 years," that "30 - 40% of junior high girls worry about weight," that "40% of 9 year old girls have dieted," or that "40 - 60% of highschool girls diet," or that the incidence of eating disorders has "doubled since the 1960s."

What next?  Underweight babies sporting Gucci diapers?

Valentino is an idiot

In today's Rush & Molloy, there's a shocking quote from fashion designer Valentino:

Asked about the Madrid Fashion Week ban on too-skinny models, the designer said, "When you present clothes for the first time on the runway, you need to have somebody with a very elongated body. If you have a big girl, it's impossible. I don't know why we have to change just because Madrid came out with a fat girl."

Meanwhile, models are dropping left and right due to eating disorders. 

Of course, should we truly be surprised that a fellow who has distorted his own face through excessive amounts of plastic surgery might have some nutty thoughts about women's bodies?

"Ugly" is a size 12????

I was watching Entertainment Tonight this evening, and saw something completely unexpected.  Inspired by the show "Ugly Betty", Vanessa Minnillo went under-cover as "Ugly Vanessa".  Nick Lachey's main squeeze, a very pretty woman, subjected herself to six hours of transformation so that she could assess whether or not pretty people are treated differently than ugly people. 

As exposés go, this one is pretty tame.  As you can imagine, when a hot blonde chick goes to a nightclub, she gets treated like royalty.  When a poorly groomed brunette with bad clothes and stringy hair goes to the same nightclub 24 hours later, she's left hanging out at the curb.  Wow.  Who'd have thought?

Here's "Ugly Vanessa" being ridiculed by passers-by (note that the woman on the far left has a body similar to "Ugly Vanessa's" - so what's the joke???):

What woke me up during the ET segment was the assertion that Vanessa wore a Size 12 fat suit, to create her "Ugly Vanessa" persona.  Minnillo is not short -- her Wikipedia bio says she's 5'8".  As a consequence, Vanessa is quite a bit different than the average American woman, who's between 5'4" and 5'5" and weighs 163 lbs.  Moreover, the average American woman wears a size 14.

So....."Ugly Vanessa" is taller and marginally slimmer than the average American woman.  Eek!

Between Hollywood's definition of ugly, and fashion's narrow and perverse definition of beauty, it's no wonder that we're depressed by ready-to-wear and consoling ourselves with handbags.