‘Vogue’ unveils secrets behind supermodel photo shoots

It takes a team of 20 professionals and up to three hours of work to make a supermodel look good enough for a photo shoot, a film aimed at teenage girls has revealed.

Vogue magazine in Britain has filmed one of its photo shoots to reveal the tricks of the trade to young girls, and to prove that even models don’t look that good in real life.

The film shows how soft lighting, make-up, and airbrushing are all used to produce the flawless images of women on the magazine’s pages.

The aim of the film is to help young girls understand that what they see on glossy pages is far from real, and to promote a healthier attitude towards body image.

The 10-minute film will be sent to around 1,000 secondary schools across Britain this week and contains interviews with the model, make-up artist, photographer, and stylist involved in the shoot discussing what it takes to get the perfect shot.

One creative director shows how she digitally alters the model’s bony chest to create a smooth décolletage for one image.

Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue, said she wanted girls to understand that what appears in the magazine is not something people can physically aspire to.

“The distance between a model getting out of bed in the morning and what you see on the page, well, it’s a huge gap,” she told The London Times.

“Most girls understand a fashion image is not a snap shot, but I don’t think they understand quite how elaborate it all is. There are all kinds of tricks people use to create the image they want. It is a construct and at every level people are adding something.”

The lesson plan supplied for teachers underlines that while the average dress size of a models is an 8, only 12% of women are that size or smaller.

The plan urges teachers to tell pupils that “only a very small percentage of the population have the natural build and appearance of a model”.

It reiterates to the girls that efforts to make oneself that size and shape when it is not your natural build “is a very unhealthy and can even be dangerous”.

While Ms Shulman said she did not want to make size the centrepiece of the film, she defends the use of stick-thin models on her pages.

“Models are thin. It is a part of the job description and, as long as they are healthy, I don’t think it matters. What would bother me is if it becomes the dominant ambition of young girls to be thin, or in fact to be models full stop. There are other things to be,” she said.