Fashion
industry told to end its quest for ‘unattainable thinness’
Women’s
Equality party demands changes to industry and a minimum body mass
index for models
Alex Clark
Sunday
4 September 2016 07.00 BST
The Women’s
Equality party is to launch an unprecedented campaign aimed at
radically changing the way the fashion industry treats body size and
shape.
Coinciding with
London fashion week, which will run from 16-20 September, the
initiative will call for an end to unrealistically small “sample
sizes” – the sizes in which designers show their new creations –
and demand a minimum body mass index (BMI) for models.
Two models, one
goal: to free women from fashion’s weight tyranny
Read more
Sophie Walker, the
WEP leader, plans to ask the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, to withdraw
funding for next year’s fashion week if the campaign’s key
demands are not in place by then. She will also ask Maria Miller,
chair of the Women and Equalities Commission, to hold a public
hearing in which fashion designers will be asked why their clothes
are based on “an unattainable level of thinness in women”, which
Walker believes is contributing to a crisis in public health with an
economic impact of £1.3bn a year.
The campaign calls
for models whose BMI is below 18.5 to be seen by a medical
professional from an accredited list, who will judge whether they are
well enough to be employed by a modelling agency. Similar legislation
exists in France, Spain, Italy and Israel. Campaigners are also
asking that fashion designers showing at LFW commit to including at
least two sample sizes in every range, one of which must be a UK size
12 or above.
Additional proposals
include fashion magazines committing to at least one piece in each
issue featuring plus-size models. WEP is also demanding that body
image awareness become a compulsory part of personal, social and
health education, with a focus on media depictions of beauty and
extra training for teachers.
Those backing the
campaign include Caryn Franklin, the former presenter of The Clothes
Show, who is now a professor of diversity in fashion at Kingston
University, plus-size model Jada Sezer and model Rosie Nixon, who has
spoken out against an industry that asked her to lose an unreasonable
and unhealthy amount of weight in order that she get “down to the
bone”.
WEP will also launch
an interactive social media campaign, #NoSizeFitsAll, based on the
statistic that one in five women cut the labels out of their clothes
to conceal their size. A photoshoot will feature new designers Isatu
Harrison and her line, Izelia, and Katie Pope of Pope London, both of
whose work will be modelled by a diverse group of women.
Walker describes the
initiative as a chance to “raise awareness of the body image issues
experienced by women and girls, and to have a discussion about the
significant and far-reaching impact of the fashion industry’s
idolisation of a unique and very small size”.
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