Models Designers and Models

At Antonio Miro’s fashion show at Barcelona, Spain..

The boat prop in the background is called a cayuco. Cayucos carried about 30,000 Africans to Spain’s Canary Islands last year alone. Many of the boats are believed to have sunk, drowning thousands of people. Antonio Miro’s employment of illegal, undocumented Senegalese migrants for his fashion show caused quite a stir. He also used to recruit prisoners. He said it was to draw attention to the plight of these illegal migrants, and he paid them “token sums”.

I swear it isn’t nice.. It’s ghastly. I wouldn’t want my clothes go down the runways fluttering off just a mere walking hanger. I’d want real people wearing them. And I’d want the audience to look at my clothes not at the model’s ribs and collarbones and *insert scientific bone names here*. It’s not pretty, it’s not okay and it’s not right that young women are being made to think this is what they should look like. And because of recent incidents like this, Madrid, Spain and Milan, Italy now require models to have a certain height-to-weight ratio- which is also followed by the U.S. fashion industry. Milan orders models to have a minimum Body Mass Index of 18.5 to walk the runway. I also like the recommendation that models should be required to pass a physical before walking the runway. Not that I want to force anything on those wanting to become models like diets or prohibit them from doing and eating things they want but at least pass the physical. It’s reasonable..

I like this photo of John Galiano (by Richard Avedon):

He’s a British/Gibraltarian couturier. He first designed for Givenchy, appointed by Bernard Arnault who owns luxury goods comglomerate LVMH, before moving less than two years later to Christian Dior. He also has his own label named after him and creates roughly 6 couture and ready-to-wear collections every year.