French fashion giants ban ultra-thin models

PARIS - AFP

A host of French-owned fashion labels spanning Christian Dior to Saint Laurent pledged on Sept. 6 to ban ultra-thin models from their advertising and catwalk shows following repeated scandals about anorexia and mistreatment.

French holding companies LVMH and Kering, which own dozens of top brands between them, unveiled a charter “to ensure the well-being of models” which will also outlaw the hiring of girls under the age of 16 to wear adult clothes at shoots or events.

In May, a French law requiring models to present a doctor’s certificate attesting to their health and was introduced to try to tackle the problem of the industry promoting thinness and unattainable beauty ideals.

Ahead of the start of New York Fashion Week, the two French groups said they would ban their designers using size 32 models under the French system -- size XXS or size zero in the US or four in Britain -- and only use women who are size 34 or over. Men would need to be size 44 or over.

“Respecting the dignity of all women has always been both a personal commitment for me and a priority for Kering as a group,” the company’s billionaire chairman Francois-Henri Pinault said in a statement.  “We hope to inspire the entire industry to follow suit, thus making a real difference in the working conditions of fashion models industry-wide,” he added.

 As well as the age and size stipulations, the charter includes other health and safety measures such as banning the serving of alcohol to models under 18 and ensuring they have a guardian or chaperone present at all times.

It has been spurred in part by a scandal during Paris Fashion Week in February which cast a spotlight on abuses by casting agencies which provide models for the big labels.

Two leading casting directors were accused of making at least 150 women wait for several hours in a stairway in the dark to audition for a show by the label Balenciaga, owned by Kering.

The American casting director James Scully denounced his rivals as “serial abusers” and said their treatment of the models was “sadistic and cruel.”

The industry has long been accused of promoting unhealthy body images to women and ignoring well-documented health problems experienced by models.

Last year, French former supermodel Victoire Dauxerre published a tell-all book about the pressures to fit into size 32-24 clothes which led her to adopt a diet of three apples a day and laxatives.

Another French model, Isabelle Caro, fronted a shocking anti-anorexia campaign during Milan fashion week in 2007 before she died from the disease three years later at the age of 28.