Size Matters

PRODUCT
H&M - Spring 09

CAMPAIGN
Kate Moss for Roberto Cavalli Underwear (2006)

CONSUMERS
Cancan girls entertain the crowd prior to the First Test match between the New Zealand All Blacks and France at Carisbrook on June 13, 2009 in Dunedin, New Zealand [jezebel.com]

British Vogue Editor's Lame PR Coup: No More Size Zeros!
COMMENTS
I don't think it's lame at all, I think it's about time someone did SOMETHING. Considering that a size 6 to 8 was once considered healthy and attractive (Hello Cindy Crawford!) and now it's a size 0? Most women don't have that body type naturally because that's the size of a child. Is that what we are all supposed to admire and emulate? No wonder so many young girls have anorexia and or bulimia.
I say kudos to Ms. Shulman.

@__: Yeah, it's easy to design things for a size 0 or size 2--there is no art there and you don't have to pay experienced seamstresses to create garments. No draping, no darts, no tailoring at all, no craft; you just make a schmatte out of cheap stretch jersey, cut out some unflattering arm holes, and maybe throw a few beads on it. Designing for real women's bodies is much more time-intensive, challenging and, yes, expensive.

@__: You're right about it taking much more skill and not everyone can do it. The freak outs on Project Runway in the real woman challenges are legendary.

@__: Absolutely. When faced with the prospect of designing a piece of clothing for a woman with a markedly different ratio between her waist, her hips and her breasts, most high-end designers would just have an attack of the vapours and wake up screaming "The Horror!THE HORROR!!" for the the rest of their lives. When you think about it, they're not actually clothes designers, they're more like incredibly commercial "artists" who work primarily with fabric. And human beings have to find some way (by being fleshless) to fit into these works of "art".
It just so happens that the rest of the human race needs actual clothes.
It's pretty incredible that Schulman has thrown down. I just wonder will anyone else follow suit?

@__: You're right, fashion is a fine blend of art and commerce. Too bad so many houses have forgotten they are designing for actual humans.
I was a fit model in Italy in the early 80s. I arrived in Milan a largish 6, after a few months I was an 8 (anyone who has ever tasted the food in Italy knows why!), but it was fine--back in those days, women, and therefore models, were allowed to have curvy figures. One of the design assistants used to call me "the Cello," which he definitely meant as an insult. He would carry on about how impossible it was to drape fabric, etc. One day a seamstress came to my defense. She was mid-sixties, very old-school, she wore black every day, a big cross, a classic Italian widow. "You leave the American girl alone!" she shouted. "She is beautiful! You think she's so big, watch out she doesn't knock you on your fennel-scented ass!" That's a translation of course, sounds much nicer in Italian.

@__: Wowza. I did some modelling about a decade ( a freaking decade ago ) and my sister is doing some now to make a few bucks through university, as I did and the difference in entry-level requirements now are...unbelievable. My test shots from '99/00 wouldn't get me a job marketing cheese, let alone couture. My sis is closer to a 0 than I ever was, she's much taller and she's genetically that rangy, runner-bean, ''modelly'' build that I got away with for a while before I said fuck it, show me the Guinness, but even she gets serious grief now. And she's only doing it part fucking time. She says quite apart from what the sample sizes have become, the actual photographers only seem to book models who have the whole lollipop beheaded/alien/big-eyed/bug-eyed thing going on. And apparently you get paid more if you allow them to throw food/liquid on you, which is de rigeur for a lot of editorial shoots.
Fashion. It's a fucking palaver.