WATCHING the skeletal figure glide down the catwalk, Samantha Cameron’s stony-faced silence spoke volumes – and has reignited the fierce size zero debate. Shots of the Prime Minister’s wife, an ambassador for London Fashion Week, looking sombre and uncomfortable at luxury label Erdem’s show on Monday has thrown attention back on super-skinny models and eating disorders.
It is a row the fashion industry hoped had gone away. Tragedies including the death of 28-year-old model Isabelle Caro in November – who had posed nude for an anti-anorexia campaign – prompted many designers to stop using size zero models. But the demand for waifs is still widespread across the industry.
Starting tonight, Channel 4 documentary The Model Agency reveals the shocking way in which wannabe models are pressurised to conform to the super skinny “norm”. The first episode concerns svelte 16-year-old India Farrell and the drama that erupts at world famous agency Premier when she is sent alone to New York Fashion Week – and is told by an agent not to put on any more weight.
Distraught and disillusioned, India gives up on her dream of modelling to fly home and return to her studies. But the agents’ initial concern for her welfare soon turns to fury as their four-year investment in nurturing the promising model (who could eventually earn £50,000 a day) unravels before their eyes.
cIt is a dark and disturbing side to a glamorous world. India, who is tall and blonde with striking cheekbones, says sadly: “I’m a slim build anyway and it made me think, ‘Do I have to go on a diet?’ I just felt lost.
“I felt trapped in a corner, looking at other models and comparing myself and thinking I’m not good enough. I’m just 16 so it was hard. I was taken to New York which was very exciting and a great experience, but when I got there it was a bit shocking. You think, ‘I’m in America on my own and I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Everyone was saying how special I was, but my head was telling me I just had to go out and do normal things – go to the cinema and see my friends.”
Premier has made the careers of supermodels Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer. Boss Carole White, who started the company 30 years ago, says: “I think it is every young girl’s dream to be a model. It’s exciting and they feel it is glamorous, but it is so, so hard.
“One girl in 10,000 might have what it takes. We look at girls of 14 or younger, we nurture them and then when they are 16 we launch them. They are very young and we try to protect them as much as we can, but it is a business and they have chosen to come into it.”
Even so, India’s story will dishearten workers at eating disorder charity Beat, who are saddened by the size zero models paraded at this week’s Erdem show. Beat chief executive Susan Ringwood says: “There’s a backward step here and it’s a shame. We had hoped the tide had turned, so this is a disappointing move.
“Young people are especially interested in fashion and they want to take the lead that it gives. And if we are now back to the old days of seeing one size on the catwalk, it is regrettable.”