Parisian fashion giants call a halt to size zero

Daughter comes home from her first day at fashion school, writes Suzanne Harrington. 

She is full of anecdotes about classmates who have never heard of hummus — she is attending a provincial fashion school, far from the capital, where it seems people are more familiar with Pot Noodle than the chickpea-based lunchbox staple. This concerns her. Future designers, who don’t know their hummus from their funny bone?

Hummus non-recognition in the provinces is a long way from the Paris fashion industry, where hummus is undoubtedly known, but seldom consumed. At least, not by the models, who seldom consume anything. Hummus is fattening, and sample sizes are cut to fit women with waists the width of a Barbie, their overall shapes just as unrealistically elongated through sustained hunger.

Starvation chic has long ruled haute couture, each stage of the fashion process from designer to model agent to magazine editor blaming the other for the industry’s continued obsession with skeletal teens as the ultimate human clothes hanger. Exposed bones as style signifier? When did our sense of aesthetic become so warped?

Hurrah then for a tiny sparkle of good news from Paris amidst the hurricanes, threats of nuclear war, and Rohingya genocide (Aung San Suu Kyi, if you are reading this — which of course you’re not, but let’s pretend you are, for dramatic effect — give back that Nobel Peace prize immediately).

Anyway — a glimmer of positivity from an unlikely source. French fashion giants LVMH and Kering (Dior, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton) say they are putting an end to the size 0 model. No more hungry bony young women, no more hungry bony underage girls. A new charter will guarantee “the well-being of the model”. Young women with obvious starvation issues will no longer be hired. Neither will under-16s. Um, yay.

This is not down to any innate altruism within the fashion industry, who have long been happy to use animal fur and starving girls to sell their products, but as a reaction to the growing voice of the voiceless via social media. Before arenas like Instagram, the only communication currency at models’ disposal was visibility — in terms of having a voice, they were as collectively dumb as a photoshoot prop.

As were ordinary consumers of fashion — not the rich twigs who sit in the front rows and actually buy haute couture, but the rest of us. Magazines tell us size 0 is desirable, and as most of us are not and never will be that hungry, it creates discomfort. And discomfort can be momentarily comforted by the purchase of products advertised in the very same magazines. Feel bad you’re a hulking size 14? Buy more stuff.

Daughter reminds me that an American size 0 is a UK size 4. Who is a UK size 4, other than a small child with rickets?

In our house, size 0 refers strictly to doughnuts. Mmmmm. Doughnuts.