You either know fashion or you don’t.
—Anna Wintour
On the surface, fashion magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle seem like glossy vehicles for designer advertisements and creative fashion spreads and features, but there’s much more than meets the eye. Top fashion magazines not only direct fashion trends and make or break a designer’s career, they also advocate styles, price points, and beauty ideals that don’t always have the reader’s best interests in mind, nor those of the models who grace these pages month in and month out.
There’s no doubt that fashion photographs have an impact on us. They reflect back to us our desires, fantasies, insecurities, and even our fears. They entertain, arouse, appall, and inspire us—sometimes all at the same time. And that’s part of the beauty and disgrace of fashion photography. Eva Mendes splayed out on a chaise longue wearing a silky floral sundress is altogether different than a sexualized ten-year-old girl bedecked in grown-up clothes and heels, her flat chest exposed, her expression sensual (as seen in January 2011 French Vogue). Like fashion itself, these photo spreads and advertisements test boundaries and push limits. There are some rules, yes, and every fashion designer and magazine has its unique style, but under all the artifice, creative expression, and pretention, they share one common goal: to market or sell a brand—whether it’s the magazine itself, the designer, or both.
Because as it turns out, much like the line between editorial content and advertising, the line between magazine editors and clothing designers is a fuzzy one at best. They depend on each other for survival, and they need you to buy into what they’re selling—even if it comes at a deeper cost than a subscription or sales receipt.
How do women’s magazines stack up against each other in the fashion game? Let’s take a look.
THE FASHION RAG RUNDOWN
Nowadays, most women’s magazines include some degree of fashion coverage, but there are several glossies that are true fashion magazines. Tops among them are Vogue, Elle, W, Harper’s Bazaar, and Glamour. However, in the pantheon of true fashion magazines, the most iconic, influential, and widely read is Vogue, which has sister editions in sixteen countries, including Spain, France, Italy, and Australia. This century-old veteran and fashionista favorite primarily showcases haute couture, which is handcrafted clothing of the most expensive and luxurious fabrics and detailing, by top designers such as Chanel, Christian Dior, and Jean Paul Gaultier. Rarely does the magazine include clothes with price points below megaexpensive. You won’t often see labels from retailers like JCPenney or Kohl’s promoted in these pages. This is fashion pretention at its best, but Vogue has never pretended to be anything but elite. Unlike more formulaic glossies, like Glamour or Cosmo, which also toss in fashion spreads, Vogue complements its fashion features with more literary content and writing that is smarter, deeper, and less patronizing than what appears in these fluffier counterparts. Vogue is also known for its hot celebrity covers and accompanying fashion layouts, which can make or break newsstand sales from one month to the next (see chapter 10 for more on the power of celebrity). The famous September issue, which heralds in the year’s fall fashions, can pack six-hundred-plus pages, by far the largest issue of all the fashion magazines. In fact, Vogue’s September issue is so unrivaled, its production—and Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour—were the subject of the 2009 documentary titled simply The September Issue.
Readers Respond
“I love the artistry of the photography and the beautiful ways they display the clothing. It’s also a kick to see what is considered ‘in fashion’ or what the current trends are. Lately, I’ve been flashing back to the ’70s. What’s old is new again.”
—Sandi, contract administrator
Next in the harem is Harper’s Bazaar, which features designer collections from all over the world, including the fashion meccas Milan and Paris. Here you’ll find more couture and classic design labels, like Yves Saint Laurent and Dior. Harper’s strives to set itself apart from other high-end fashion glossies, including Vogue, by only including fashion-related editorial content. If it’s not about designers, trendy-looking fashions, runway shows, or models, you won’t see it in Harper’s. There are no health or career articles, for instance. Who reads Harper’s? Affluent, professional women between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-four, with median incomes over $70,000.
Elle, which was launched in 1981 as the American counterpart to the original French version that was created in the forties, is one of the largest fashion magazines in the world. Like Vogue, it has sister editions around the world, boasting thirty-six editions on six continents. American Elle features high fashion similar to Harper’s and Vogue, but claims it leans toward more affordable, wearable, and accessible clothing—albeit still exclusive, by conventional standards. Here you’ll find mostly higher-end labels like Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, and Armani as well as the occasional item you can actually buy at department stores like Macy’s. The fashion spreads here, like you’ll find in the other magazines, rely heavily on celebrities and thin beauty standards, but they’re more playful and less rigid. Unlike the top-tier fashion magazines, Elle takes itself less seriously, focusing more on what’s trendy and fun in the realm of high-end fashion. As for nonfashion content, it’s a middle ground between Vogue and Glamour. Here you’ll find women’s issues and lengthy features minus women’s magazine staples, like career and money advice.
W magazine, on the other hand, may be the most artistic of the fashion rags, focusing on the true art of fashion, with eclectic, high-end, colorful fashion spreads. W splits its heft between fashion spreads and celebrity profiles and spottings, often using celebrities in lieu of models to showcase edgy styles. It concentrates on hip, up-and-coming designers like Tory Burch and Jason Wu, and less on classic designers like Versace or Dior, though their clothing is still showcased as well. Readers are mostly married, educated women with median incomes over the $150,000 mark, indicating they may be both in the market for, and can afford to replicate, a fashion look they see on a celebrity within W’s pages.
GLOSSY FACT
Vogue’s Anna Wintour is given much of the credit for creating the now-standard celebrity fashion spread, where actresses, rather than models, are photographed wearing designer clothes in a fashion layout. She put Kim Basinger on Vogue’s cover in May 1991 when actresses were no more model material than the average woman on the street. Winona Ryder and Sharon Stone followed in 1993, Julia Roberts in 1994, and Demi Moore in 1995. Suddenly, it was fashionable to use beautiful actresses to model clothing. Claire Danes, Renée Zellweger, and Sandra Bullock took their turns as Vogue cover models later, and the celeb model was born, something done in almost every woman’s glossy on the stands today. Usually, the accompanying article includes an exclusive fashion spread featuring the celebrity in a constellation of designer wear.
Glamour, which has become the bridge between higher-end fashion magazines and the Seven Sisters gang, takes a more light-hearted route by including a fashion spread (or three) in between the work, relationship, and health and beauty articles. Fashion features sometimes showcase clothes that young trendsetters could actually wear—perhaps even afford on occasion. Spreads are often colorful, youthful, and playful instead of the more daring, avant-garde or boundary-pushing spreads you’ll find in Vogue and Harper’s. Considering its younger demographic (women between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine), this makes sense. Here, advertising also reflects its broader coverage. In addition to ads for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, you’ll see ads for tampons and yogurt. Thus, Glamour is less dependent on designer ads, but it still depends on regular fashion features to win and keep readers.
Similar to Glamour, Marie Claire includes fashion spreads that are spaced between content on career, health, relationships, women’s issues, and politics. The spreads tend to be more eclectic, showcasing a mix of classic and fresh designers in a variety of themed layouts. For example, in the March 2012 issue, they included a modern-day mermaid spread done in soft pinks, blues, and ivories, with the models adorned in feathers, appliqué, lace overlays, and thick-textured wools from the likes of Chanel, Dior, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein. They also list each model’s name, the age they were discovered—which is usually a very young twelve or thirteen—their hometown, and playful bits like their guilty pleasure, and the one celebrity they’d like to meet. We aren’t offered their current age, but most look no more than sixteen or eighteen.
Other women’s magazines, from InStyle to O magazine, Self, Shape, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Essence, Ladies’ Home Journal, MORE, Woman’s Day and the rest, give fashion, though perhaps not top billing, a lesser but equally important presence in their pages, showcasing one or more fashion layouts in each issue, complete with theme, story, model type, designer favorites, accessory credits, and their own personal spin on it all.
Why one designer’s goods are chosen for a fashion layout while another’s are overlooked in any particular magazine during any particular month may be a complex dance that includes the relationship the editors have with each design house, the amount of money the designer lays out in advertising dollars, and a host of other social, personal, and business connections between the two.
A FASHIONABLE AFFAIR
There’s a big difference between fashion journalism and fashion advocacy. The latter is what we question here. As it is with advertising in chapter 3, the implication that fashion editors pay homage to designers who have bought their way into the good graces of the magazine by spending mega ad dollars in exchange for coverage of their designs in fashion layouts is the issue. Though we readers may be aware of this symbiotic relationship on the surface, we’re not privy to how much the likes of Dior or Calvin Klein are expected to spend in ad money in order for said magazine to grace its pages with their looks in an industry where dozens of other designers are vying for the same editorial space. Furthermore, is that Dior or Calvin Klein design really the trendiest or loveliest fashion since the invention of Velcro, or did those design houses pay the most money for the editors to include it? And if that’s the case, can you even trust their fashion opinion?
In 2010, rumors of backroom brokering between designers and editors turned to more than just speculation when the equivalent of a smoking gun was found suggesting that Harper’s Bazaar very clearly played favorites with big advertisers. According to the fashion blog Racked, a list was left behind on the desktop of a major hotel lobby’s public computer that contained the names of designers who were to be used in a ten-page Harper’s Bazaar editorial fashion shoot.1 Priority was given in descending order to design houses that had contributed the most ad dollars. Yet below that list were the names of designers (listed in alphabetical order) who had not contributed advertising, with instructions that they be worked into the fashion shoot, if possible. The list appeared to be a blatant violation of the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines for advertisers, which states that “advertisers are subject to liability for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements, or for failing to disclose material connections between themselves and their endorsers.”2
While Harper’s remained mum, the incident was widely reported by fashion industry folks, who commented that while readers could have guessed that backroom deals took place between fashion mags and designers, this was a rare piece of real anecdotal evidence.
Insider Input
Grace Mirabella, former Vogue editor, was once asked where the power in the fashion triangle (designers, buyers, or magazines) lies. She narrowed it down to magazines, saying, “Which is not to say that individual designers don’t make important statements. Or that store buyers aren’t the first on their block. But finally, finally, the magazines dictate what’s at the top. We don’t design clothes but we can be very selective in our reporting.”3
While it’s easy to look at the Harper’s slip-up and wag a finger at the magazine for its blatant favoritism, it’s truly sobering when you realize just how serious the fashion game really is.
For instance, in 2011, Vogue brought in a staggering $92 million in ad revenue, or 584 pages of ads, for its September issue, which is the fashion magazine industry’s biggest month of the year. And while that’s a 10 percent increase over 2010, it’s nothing compared to the record-breaking 2007 issue, which included 727 advertising pages—which easily put revenue over the $100 million mark.4
But how should we react when magazines are actually transparent about favoring advertisers? In the contest to attract ad dollars for the September fashion issue, magazines must get creative. For its 2011 issue, Glamour lured in advertisers by offering to include a 2-D bar code for its iPad edition, which readers could photograph and “like” on Facebook. In return, readers would receive special offers from advertisers, fostering potential patronage. Glamour called it the “Friends & Fans” app, and advertisers flocked, keeping Glamour’s ad dollars from suffering a loss over its previous year.
And what of the more subtle influences behind the designers and styles that are advocated in the pages of our glam rags? It’s all about relationships, and there’s no better name-maker—and breaker—than Vogue’s own Anna Wintour, who is responsible for some of fashion’s heaviest hitters ending up where they are today. In addition to nominating fresh designers for the annual Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund scholarship, she’s negotiated many corporate pairings, such as Michael Kors with Sportswear Holdings and Bottega Veneta with Gucci. She helped relaunch down-and-out John Galliano (the first go-around, as he was later suspended from Dior in 2011 after he was caught on video making an anti-Semitic remark to a couple in a French pub), as well as Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton.
When asked about the risk of having a bevy of the top designers and houses at her beck and call, many of whom owe her major favors, she insisted she was always open to new design talent but admitted that she liked to stick close to trusty regular designers—among them Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, and Valentino—for each issue’s content.5
Considering Wintour’s legacy, influence, clout, and lengthy family tree of top designers with whom she’s connected, it’s interesting to note that she’s not always been considered the most influential among her contemporaries. Surprise, surprise, Wintour tied for second with Elle Editor-in-Chief Robbie Myers, according to a 2008 Forbes piece on the most powerful fashion magazine editors in America. Turns out, the top spot went to Glamour’s Cindi Leive. Of course, Forbes used a more fiscally based algorithm to rank the editors, including the monthly unique visitors to each magazine’s website, plus their subscription revenue, advertising rates, previous year’s ad revenue, and any increases in circulation.6
At the time of the ranking, Glamour was kicking ass under Leive’s reins, with the highest-ever circulation and a huge increase in web traffic. But readers were taken into consideration too, and Glamour just may be a more accessible, down-to-earth example of what readers look for in a fashion rag.
“Vogue’s audience is aspirational, while Glamour’s audience wants to see products that are in their reach,” said Harriet Brown, an assistant professor of magazine journalism at the S.I. New-house School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.7
•••
In another example of the incestuous relationship between designers and magazines, the high-end clothing-design house Prada invited magazine editors to window-dress and style four different flagship Prada stores around the globe. An editor from W styled the New York City SoHo Prada store, the stores in London and Milan were tackled by editors from fashion mags in the United Kingdom, and Prada in Paris was dressed by Anna Wintour’s Parisian counterpart at French Vogue.
The editors chose the clothes and arranged and accessorized the mannequins, bringing their vision to the window of the designer’s spring collection that year. But should they have? This is just another example that erases any pretense that editors and fashion designers scratch each other’s couture-covered backs.
Sometimes, the crossover is literal, further muddying the boundaries. For instance, magazine editors sometime switch sides and become designers, taking with them clout and connections, which they use to finagle their clothing into a magazine’s pages. Vera Wang is probably the most notable example, having worked as a fashion editor at Vogue for more than fifteen years before becoming a designer. Many editors on the mastheads of magazines also have simultaneously worked as stylists for top designers. While this may make sense, since it’s their area of expertise, it comes with questionable ethical dilemmas.
And in yet one more example of this blurry line, in 2011 magazines began selling designer goods straight from their pages. In what’s been dubbed a team-up with e-commerce sites, magazines like Vogue, Harper’s, and Allure (Esquire and GQ are participating, too) send readers straight to an online service where they can scoop up the very designs showcased in their magazines each month.8 Magazines get either a fee or a small portion of the sales for sending a certain amount of customers to the e-commerce site. In an effort to become e-tailers, magazines are competing directly with stores like Saks and Neiman Marcus, selling designs by Lanvin, Dior, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, and the rest.
Though women’s magazines may never have pretended to be objective observers of the fashion world, they certainly celebrate the most talented designers, laud the up-and-comers with pages of new fashions, and showcase beautiful clothing each month. But are they beautiful clothes because the magazines tell us so, or because the designer is in the editor’s proverbial pocket?
The implication is clear: designers are paying for their designs to be showcased in magazines by purchasing advertising, and editors may only be showing those designer’s fashions because they were paid to. While on the surface, women may understand that fashion editorial spreads are endorsements, the connections between editors and designers are clearly not disclosed to the readers. Further, there is no fine print at the end of a fashion layout informing us that Tommy Hilfiger or Kate Spade bought three pages of advertising in InStyle this month worth $453,900 but it’s quietly implied when we see their ads regularly appear in the magazine. And while we’re talking figures, let’s have a peek into the price points of just what the actual clothes run us in terms of real numbers.
THE HIGH COST OF FASHION, LITERALLY
Even if you love fashion and live for the September issues, women’s magazines showcase a slew of clothing, shoes, and accessories that are seriously pricey. These overpriced clothing and accessories are what most women have come to expect from the glossies. Due to the advertiser’s influence and the relationships developed between designers and fashion editors, Prada bags and Gucci shoes, Tiffany jewels, Dior dresses, and Versace coats are standard fare. Occasionally, magazines like Glamour and Cosmo and a few others throw women a bone by including items from retailers like Anthropologie, H&M, Banana Republic, and other semiaffordable retailers, again usually based on their advertising pool. This must-have loot the mags run month in and month out is promoted in an almost advertorial setting that screams, “You must have this dress!” or “This is the ‘it’ bag this season.” Often, readers have to look closely to distinguish between a page of advertising and a page of editorial since they are both clearly selling the design goods on each page. One caveat is that some fashion magazines like to promote accessories and fashions that are “good deals.” Those items are often couched in buy-for-less articles, which compare a high-end designer fashion, like a $700 dress from Diane von Furstenberg, with a $70 retail chain look-alike from Banana Republic. In the March 2012 Glamour, cover girl Amanda Seyfried’s look is replicated with earrings from jewelrybox.com, jeans from American Eagle, and shoes from the Jessica Simpson collection, coming in at likely a twelfth of the price of the clothing she wears on the cover. Likewise, the January 2012 Cosmo replicates the look of stars’ expensive outfits with reasonable chain-store knockoffs.
The message being sold is that these high-price-point items are fashionable, and if you’re the trendy type, you really should be buying into them, literally. If you can’t, well, the next best thing is the cheap page of deals and steals, replications and reproductions, which some of the magazines do include each month. Of course, the inference here is that if you don’t spring for the pricey goods, you’re just not as cool. Unfortunately, the average magazine reader can’t afford to dress-out their closets with much of the pricey clothing, jewelry, shoes, and accessories that are advertised, which only enhances their desirability. And most real women don’t live the requisite lifestyles in which to wear these fashions. In fact, the median income range for Glamour readers is $63,500, while Lucky boasts a reader average income of $82,000, and Vogue’s is $63,094. But expensive brands, and the status they confer, have long been alluring to women, young and old.
A 2009 study in the Journal of Brand Management found that “fashion brands are seen as strong vehicles for expressing self-concept. . . . They help to achieve an image and signify a group membership mentality.”9 Study author Angela Carroll says there’s an implied social code with the coveted brands, as well as a negative connotation that comes with unbranded fashion goods, whereby “belongers” need the branded fashion merchandise to affirm their social identity. Basically, this means the hippest fashion brands make you feel cooler and help you conform to your peers, especially for the young consumer.
Case in point: how often do you see ads, fashion spreads, and celebrity profiles of women bedecked in clothes from Target, which sells quality brands at affordable prices?
However, some designers are attempting to bring their fashions to the masses. Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Versace, and Marni all designed collections for H&M, which is the proverbial bridge between Target and Macy’s. Jason Wu, Missoni, and Zac Posen designed for Target, and Vera Wang for Kohl’s. These are midlevel retail prices with a designer label attached. And they’ve been wildly successful: Jason Wu’s fifty-three-piece collection for Target reportedly sold out both online and in stores the same day it launched, according to US Weekly.10 Likewise, Missoni sold out its four-hundred-piece designer collection for Target overnight at most stores, and customers crashed the website several times on launch day in the madness to scoop up designer labels.11
Readers Respond
“One of my gripes is the ‘How to Get This Outfit for Less’ features, where the cheaper version is only $500. Who spends that much? Nobody I know. If magazines really wanted our attention, they would create a look appropriate for dropping your kids off at school, going into the gym to exercise, and then going to the grocery store—all without changing. I actually remember an article about ten years ago where Josie Bissett [of the show Melrose Place] did a layout of what new moms should wear. I headed straight to Old Navy with my magazine and copied her looks.”
—Ann, court reporter
Like fine art, or a well-engineered car, high-end clothes have a place and a target market. And while we can’t all afford these luxuries, we certainly can admire and fantasize about them, which is one of the biggest allures of fashion magazines. Being transported out of the conventional, appreciating the artistry, or flinching at the vulgarity of fashions has long been a favorite pastime, whether we can afford to buy into them or not.
GLOSSY FACT
According to a 2011 Wall Street Journal article titled “How Can Jeans Cost $300?” the markup of designer clothing is 2.2 to 2.6 times cost.12 That means a designer dress that cost $500 to create will cost $1,300 (500 x 2.6) by the time it reaches a swanky store. The magic compounding the price also includes the designer’s current cache and popularity, how high-end the store is, and the region in which it’s located. New York or Los Angeles obviously command higher prices than a city in Middle America.
THE (YOUNG) FACES OF FASHION
Of course the price isn’t the only problem plaguing the fashion industry. What about the women modeling the merchandise? For starters, we must use the word “women” loosely since the average age of models has slipped precariously below the standard once considered the norm, and with that brings a host of accompanying labor laws and moral and ethical dilemmas that come with using young, underage girls to model adult clothing.
Also asking those questions is The Model Alliance, a new nonprofit group dedicated to improving working conditions in the American modeling industry. At the start of the February 2012 Fashion Week, Alliance founder and model Sara Ziff delivered an impressive speech that raised concerns about the crisis of eating disorders and body image issues among models, challenging the industry to not only rethink size standards, but also improve financial transparency and bolster and enforce child labor laws. Ziff laid out additional goals for the Alliance, including instituting a backstage privacy policy at fashion shows and a system to anonymously counsel models on workplace abuse, among other recommendations. She also presented a draft of a models’ bill of rights. Coco Rocha, the Canadian model who’s been an outspoken advocate against eating disorders in the industry, cohosted the evening, remarking, “This is about our rights as human beings, as women and men.”13
Ziff, who filmed the 2010 semiautobiographical documentary Picture Me about the abuses in the modeling industry, emphasized numerous issues as the foundation of the Alliance’s mission, recalling when she’d been put on the spot to take age-inappropriate photos. She also spoke of feeling that agencies have in the past been dishonest in their bookkeeping practices at the expense of models. There was plenty of support from models in the industry, asserting that they need some sort of representation and protection, especially underage girls, since modeling without any kind of mentor or chaperone is a recipe for abuse and manipulation.
In Picture Me, Ziff exposes the compromising positions in which young models may find themselves. Teenage girls are asked to dress down to nearly nothing or even to get naked during a photo shoot. One young model in the documentary shares how she took off her clothes with no problem, but when the photographer took his off, too, she started to understand the creepy and inappropriate implication. Another model recounts how a photographer asked her to come to the hot tub after a shoot, and she just assumed everyone from the photo shoot would be there, so she agreed. But when she arrived, she discovered that he was the only one in the hot tub—naked, to boot. Feeling uncertain about what to do, she said she got in (wearing her bathing suit), and he immediately tried to grope her breasts. When she shunned his advances and got out of the tub, clearly miffed, he said, “Oh, aren’t we on the same page?” To which she replied, “You’re forty-five, I’m sixteen; no we’re not on the same page.”14
Insider Input
“More than ever, the media is enforcing overt sexual behavior on young girls. I know when I was modeling, my agent told me at sixteen that she wanted me to take ‘sexier’ pictures, and many of the photographers were pushing me to wear something sheer, with small shorts, and tossing around the word ‘sexy’ before I was eighteen. With fans blowing my hair, a top that showed my midriff, and tight jeans—it took a toll on my self-image from a young age.”
—Nicole Weider, former Victoria’s Secret model
A fourteen-year-old is barely learning how to assert herself as an individual, let alone when she’s in a situation like that. And how easily can she stand up for her rights and, say, refuse to walk a runway with her ass half exposed if a big-name designer’s stylist is insisting that she does? Her career is at stake and she may not have the wisdom or courage to just say no. She shouldn’t have to in the first place.
Another hot-button issue among models and their advocates is remuneration for walking in a fashion show. Apparently, while top models earn megabucks, and lesser models earn some level of pay, it’s just as likely that young, unknown models are “paid” in the way of clothes from a designer’s collection, or they simply work in exchange for “exposure” on the catwalk—in more ways than one. And if a model isn’t happy with that, or complains about the conditions, there are ten other young wannabes itching to nab her spot in a show or photo shoot.
The pressure to start modeling younger and younger in an industry where you’re all but dried up by your early twenties is all-consuming. Models as young as thirteen and fourteen are widely sought, especially those from small-town Middle America and impoverished Eastern European cities who are more likely to be exploited and objectified without chaperones to look out for their welfare.15
Worse, adult models with almost-real-looking bodies can’t even compete next to these adolescent and sometimes prepubescent girls in their own industry. How does this serve adult women who are reading fashion magazines?
Under scrutiny recently has been the fact that girls as young as ten are modeling, posing in seductive, sexualized clothing and full makeup and stilettos. In a January 2011 French Vogue, ten-year-old Thylane Blondeau is sprawled seductively on tiger-print bedding wearing very grown-up looking diamond jewelry and full makeup, with her waist-length locks swept into a sophisticated up-do. In another, she wears a gold lamé dress that is cut to the waist, with matching gold stilettos (though of course, her flat chest peaks from beneath the fabric, as she has no cleavage, let alone breasts). Critics blasted both the magazine’s fifteen-page spread, guest edited by designer Tom Ford, as well as the child’s modeling agency and parents for the debacle. Parents groups issued statements of condemnation, and bloggers worldwide called the whole thing creepy, in the same way kiddie pageants are offensive.
GLOSSY FACT
In 2010, Michael Kors pledged to no longer work with models under the age of sixteen, hoping to keep what he called the industry’s “army of children” from proliferating.16
Of course, sexualizing young girls in the interest of fashion is not a new trend. Remember Brooke Shields and Calvin Klein, and the famous tagline: “Nothing gets between me and my Calvins”? The ads were overtly sexual, and Brooke? She was barely fifteen. This began an era of blatant sexual ads starring half-clad young teen girls, which continued to escalate in raunch factor until the public, religious organizations, and citizen groups began to call for boycotts. Apparently, not much has changed—except that the girls keep getting younger.
Another ten-year-old to hit the big labels is Cindy Crawford’s own daughter, Kaia, who is the newest face of Versace. Her entrance into the modeling world sparked worldwide debate. Opeds, blog posts, and websites buzzed with the news of the mini Crawford model, and the “how young is too young” argument. In the midst of that storm, Mom put the brakes on, telling Fashion Week Daily, “At this point, she’s too young to pursue a career. There's not even a handful of jobs for a ten-year-old girl. But if she’s seventeen and wants to try it, of course, what can I say?”17
But we’re left wondering if Crawford pulled the plug because there truly are no jobs for prepubescent models, or because the chatter surrounding a ten-year-old as the face of a designer campaign was too controversial.
Likewise, Kate Moss’s thirteen-year-old sister, Lottie, has also entered the fray. In her test photos, which hit the Internet in 2011, she appeared sultry and grown up, with tousled hair, heels, and shorts, and come-hither expressions—looking well beyond her thirteen years.
Fourteen-year-old Hailee Steinfeld, a child actress, became the face of Miu Miu’s fall 2011 campaign. And Hailee isn’t the only young starlet courted by the fashion houses. Thirteen-year-old Elle Fanning followed her big sister, Dakota, into the branding arena when she became the face of Marc Jacobs 2011 fall campaign, looking quite grown up in a full-length fur coat, wide-legged wool pants, and a cropped blouse.
Then there’s Dakota herself, who posed quite suggestively in an ad for Marc Jacobs’ Oh, Lola perfume, which is named for the sexually precocious twelve-year-old character in Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous 1955 novel Lolita. Jacobs caught flak from the British Advertising Standards Authority (BASA) when it banned the ad, which shows Dakota sitting on the floor, leaning back on one thin arm, looking languid, wearing a pale lace polka-dotted dress, and squeezing a giant pink bottle of perfume between her outstretched legs. To say it looked phallic is an understatement. And that was the purpose! More concerning, however, is that the shot intentionally makes Fanning out to look childlike rather than grown up. As Jacobs told Women’s Wear Daily, “When we were speaking about who to use in the Oh, Lola fragrance ads, I had recently seen The Runaways. Dakota was in it, and I knew she could be this contemporary Lolita, seductive yet sweet.”18
The BASA, none too pleased by the overt sexuality of the ad, stated: “ We understood the model was seventeen years old, but we considered she looked under the age of sixteen. The length of her dress, her leg, and position of the perfume bottle drew attention to her sexuality. Because of that, along with her appearance, we considered the ad could be seen to sexualize a child.”19
Again, it reeks of creepy child porn, which is apparently the hot look in fashion. Of course, the artistic eye is subjective, and photographers, designers, and others in the industry who are caught in the crossfire often defend it as “art” and “freedom of expression.” True enough, but when most of the public’s interpretation skews towards kiddie porn, there’s a problem.
Meanwhile, child labor laws, pay equality, and the fight against sexism, objectification, and harassment for young models who estimates say average a modest $27,000 annually and are encouraged to drop out of school and work for a piece of possibly unwearable couture, are important topics being addressed by the Model Alliance. The Council of Fashion Designers in America (CFDA) and Vogue magazine have already offered to support changes within the industry. Prime among the issues are that young models have become easy prey for the industry to take advantage of on many levels.
Insider Input
“‘Truth in advertising’ should include information on the age of the models in all women’s magazine photos, whether it’s in ads or content. These are girls—not just teenagers—but sometimes girls as young as ten, eleven, and twelve, in the case of some fashion ads. They sell them to us as the image of the ideal woman. Throw in the added insult of photo retouching, and you end up with an absurd body image that no real adult woman can match.”
—Roxanne Hawn, magazine writer
In Picture Me, Ziff also exposes how models are exploited financially. For instance, when new models are signed with agencies, it’s standard practice for them to be flown to their destination countries, provided a car and driver, an apartment, and copies of their portfolio book, which is sent around to fashion houses—all at their own expense, as the agency bills them for each of these items. Girls can rack up quite a debt, and these costs are subtracted from their earnings—when they finally have them. But the more runway shows the models are cast for, the more exposure they get. And the bigger the show, the better the odds that a prominent fashion magazine editor may see and request them for future editorial work, which leads to the best money in the business. Just as editors like Anna Wintour can make or break a designer, so it is with the models themselves.
GLOSSY FACT
The Model Alliance surveyed eighty-five fashion models currently working in the industry in 2012, with an average age of twenty-six. These were some of the results:
•76.5 percent have been exposed to drugs or alcohol on the job.
•64.1 percent have been asked to lose weight by their agencies.
•29.7 percent of models have been touched inappropriately on the job.
•28 percent have been pressured to have sex with someone on the job.
•Of those who’ve experienced sexual harassment, only 29.1 percent felt they could tell their agencies.
•86.8 percent have been asked to pose nude.
source: http://modelalliance.org/industry-analysis
No matter what her age, if a model is liked, she’s golden; pass her over enough and she goes home broke.
THE UGLY SIDE OF THE BEAUTY IDEAL
And contrary to how you might believe models are treated like golden girls, the reality of the industry shows they’re nothing more than livestock—prodded in and examined for flaws. In Ziff’s documentary, many young girls attest to being treated simply as a body, describing scenes in which stylists talk about the models as if they’re not right there in front of them. “We’d put her in that outfit, but her ass is too big, her thighs too fleshy,” recalls one model in the documentary. Yet clearly, no size 2 has an ass that’s too big or thighs that are truly fleshy. These girls are simply the illusion of the fashion industry, in which clothes supposedly look better on an uberthin hanger. And models are not above degradation from all sides of the equation.
Insider Input
“I had a problem with the way we were treated, not only on the set, but also at go-sees. Think Simon [Cowell] on steroids, and that’s pretty much how they talked to us. ‘Hmm . . . thighs are too muscular. Not enough space between them. Cankles. Head’s too big. Head’s too small. Too black—all anyone will see are eye-whites and teeth. Paste-y. Your skin is almost see-through!’ I’ve heard it all. We were treated like cattle and talked to like idiots.”
—Diane Faulkner, former model
Upon the unveiling of the 2012 Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, Sophia Neophitou, the woman who casts the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, said she’d never deign to let the Sports Illustrated cover girl, Kate Upton, walk that coveted runway. She told The New York Times that “we would never use Upton because her look is ‘too obvious’ to be featured in the high-profile production.” She then called Upton a “page 3 girl,” referencing the busty, barely clad women featured in The Sun, a London tabloid. “She’s like a footballer’s wife, with the too-blonde hair and that kind of face that anyone with enough money can go out and buy.”20
Really? What’s the point of degrading the twenty-two-year-old model who had just made the sought-after cover of the ubiquitous Sports Illustrated with such hostile comments? Talk about an undermining, backbiting industry.
Then there’s the ubiquitous issue of eating disorders. We’ve already seen a grassroots movement in the industry with regard to eating disorders. Many models have opened up about having, if not the clinical definitions of anorexia or bulimia, disordered and extremely unhealthy eating habits. Why wouldn’t they? Models are almost expected to abstain from solid food the day before a shoot or fashion show so their tummy won’t bulge, and they often follow ritualistic and even dangerous diet plans several weeks before big modeling events. These young girls and women don’t always effortlessly keep their weight down, after all. The desired hip circumference in the industry is thirty-four to thirty-five inches, with an anything-over-and-you’re-out mentality. How do they measure up, literally? Statistics show that most models are between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, with an average height of between five ten and five eleven, and an average weight between 120 and 124 pounds. The healthy weight for a woman who is five feet ten is between 142 and 150 pounds, with models weighing 23 percent less than the average woman.22
Insider Input
“I remember one of the models who was with my agency told me she frequently swallowed cotton balls of orange juice to ‘fill her up’ with the orange flavor.”
—Nicole Weider, former Victoria’s Secret model
GLOSSY FACT
In a 2006 study published in the Journal of Human Sciences on how models were portrayed across four different women’s magazines—Fitness, InStyle, Good Housekeeping, and Glamour—researchers found that thin women were more frequently portrayed in Fitness magazine and that average-size women appeared most frequently in Good Housekeeping. The study looked at forty ads that ran in the four magazines between the years 2003 and 2005. Models portrayed in the most respectful body positions were most frequently (and predictably) found in GH, while women who were photographed in submissive/sexual body poses were seen mostly in Glamour. Glamour also ran the highest frequency of women who were nude or scantily dressed. The thinnest models were portrayed in Fitness and InStyle.21
The study is important because it showed that magazines geared toward younger women objectify women as primarily sexual beings, thus sending the message that this is an ideal body type and aesthetic to model.
Go back half a century, and the average model in the 1960s was about five foot seven and weighed 129 pounds. And in the 1980s, curvier models like Christie Brinkley and Cindy Crawford were taller and thinner but still possessed a healthy BMI. By the 1990s, however, the emaciated look of “heroin chic” made its way to the runway and to the pages of the glossies, and a troubling trend became more deeply rooted.
In 2007, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) created a health initiative to raise awareness of eating disorders in the fashion industry and to try to bring change to the desired look of the models on runways and in magazines from the skeletal look to a more realistic ideal. Unfortunately, the CFDA really only raised the ire of models and critics when they took on a righteous stance, downplaying the role the industry plays in the crisis. In a letter from CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg, the council seems to place the blame on the models instead. An excerpt from the 2010 letter states: “No single influence is responsible for the development of eating disorders. Genetics, neurochemistry, personality, weight-conscious occupations, and sociocultural factors all play a role in the etiology of these illnesses. Five percent of women in the United States struggle with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa at some point in their lives.”23
Here is the very industry blaming personality and genetics rather than holding themselves up to scrutiny. Not a very fashionable move.
Insider Input
“There were several things we were encouraged to do to be camera-ready. The favorite was to nibble on chocolate Ex-Lax and drink close to a gallon of room-temperature water a day. No salt of any kind. No pop. No caffeine. This is all done three days before a shoot. The idea was that this regimen would keep our stomachs flat and keep us from bloating.”
—Diane Faulkner, former model
What do you want to guess is the percentage of models who struggle with an eating disorder? Well, one 2008 Italian study found that 54.5 percent of fashion models had a BMI under eighteen, which indicates probable eating disorders, and 5 percent were diagnosed with a clinical eating disorder much younger than nonmodels of the same age.24
The fact is, models wouldn’t be dying to achieve thinness if designers and industry insiders made good on their promise to use meatier women with curves and those over the age of sixteen, as the council suggested. The guidelines presented by the council include encouraging models to receive regular medical care and advising those who may have an eating disorder to seek professional help in order to continue modeling. Hmmm . . . a preventive guideline might be a little more successful and more on point, no?
Or how about forcing designer hands to create larger sample sizes of the designer’s clothing that models must fit into; say, no less than a size 4 as opposed to the size 0 to 2 that models are literally dying to fit into. The premise of the guidelines is that models must do a better job of managing the stress of being unrealistically thin. Yes, that sounds like the solution to this insidious issue, right? Not so much.
An editorial on the CFDA site cowritten by Furstenberg, who’s also a veteran fashion designer, acknowledges that there’s a lot of pressure from the industry to be thin, but it still places most of the blame on models. “Some models have difficulty maintaining the body ideal as they move into adulthood,” it reads, “and run the risk of engaging in unhealthy eating behaviors that lead to eating disorders.”25
Well, what exactly would you have them do to fit into the too-thin ideal, Ms. von Furstenberg? Oh yeah, see the doctor more often and get help with their eating disorder when they hit a mammoth brick wall or a complete collapse of their health. Shit, that’s brilliant.
Readers Respond
“A few years back, the nine-year-old girl I was babysitting held up the cover of Seventeen and went, ‘I’m fat. Look at her, she’s pretty.’ And then she pointed to a picture of a model in Seventeen, and said, ‘But she’s not fat.’ I looked at the picture, and the model was maybe a size 2. It was sad.”
—Stacy, writer
Instead, the industry blames bad genes and personality issues for predisposing models to eating disorders. And worse, it leaves the models at the heart of fixing the whole problem themselves. When in fact, the council could foster real change by instituting guidelines wherein designers couldn’t hire women under certain weights, under certain measurements, and under certain ages. Why not mandate sample clothes as size 4 or 6, or require that half a designer’s show must consist of women over a certain age or weight? No, that would take the blame off the models and put it back on the industry, wouldn’t it?
The guidelines also call upon designers to support the well-being of younger models by not hiring those under the age of sixteen for runway shows and not letting those under eighteen work past midnight. The fashion industry and the academic eating disorders community participated in a CFDA-hosted panel discussion titled “The Beauty of Health: Resizing the Sample Size” in 2010. Designers, magazine editors, and casting directors in attendance spoke of the need to improve model’s lives and encourage healthy lifestyles, but no one’s seemed to manage to resize a thing in the interim.
And sadly, this pervasive belief that thin is the beauty ideal informs even how women outside the fashion industry are judged. Take designer Karl Lagerfeld’s comment to the Metro, a European daily newspaper: “The thing at the moment is Adele. She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice.”26 He later backtracked and recanted the comment, saying it was taken out of context and not at all the way it was intended. Lagerfeld even shared that he lost a whopping thirty kilos over a decade ago and he knows how hard it can be to struggle with weight. Again, he put his foot in his mouth, since his comments implied that Adele is “struggling” in any way with her size. Writers at the website Jezebel poked fun by saying, “Internationally recognized weight management expert/robot Karl Lagerfeld is walking back his comments to Metro that singer Adele is ‘a little too fat.’”27
Insider Input
“Although the modeling industry has slowly embraced more curves, on the runway it is still impossibly stick-skinny, with the models showing their ribs and shoulder bones. They feel the pressure to stay this skinny because the designers want to make sure they are ‘clothes hangers’ and not get their body in the way of the clothing. It is truly tragic.”
—Nicole Weider, former Victoria’s Secret model
As if that weren’t humiliating enough for Adele, Vogue also seemed to discriminate against her voluptuousness, only in a less vocal but nonetheless overt way. In March 2012, Adele graced the cover of this titular fashion magazine. Usually, a cover is complemented by a generous fashion spread on the interior. Unfortunately, aside from the cover and one couched shot of the singer in a beautiful black embroidered top and marigold silk taffeta dress by Oscar de la Renta, shot in extremely low lighting complete with strategic manipulation of Adele’s figure, there are no other photos other than a headshot in this spread. It seems Vogue had a quibble with Adele’s ability to be a fashion icon, despite putting her on the cover and giving her the Vogue nod of approval. When it comes to thinner actresses and singers, they’re usually given the six- to eight-page minimum spread, along with an incredible array of clothing changes, often shot in an exotic photo location, so Adele’s half-assed treatment seems a little shameful. In fact, the one shot they do provide is so stunning we’d have preferred another handful.
•••
Fashion rags and those glossies that include fashion have a responsibility not only to their readers but also to the models who grace their pages. Rather than turn a blind eye to underweight, underage, underrepresented ethnicities or sexually inappropriate fashion photography, editors should actively rectify those issues in their magazines, support mandates and grassroots efforts to end exploitation, and strive to see that the fashion industry and those involved don’t sweep horrors under the rug, but hold them up to the light instead. Where once women defined their personal style by the fashions they read about and emulated in the glossies, we now question some of the more insidious messages conveyed via the fashion imagery we see in magazines. Regardless of whether you devour these magazines monthly, hooked by the alluring and the lurid that’s reflected in the layouts, or you just skim through them on the way to the heavier-hitting articles, remember that you can voice your concerns about the ugly underside of the fashion industry not only by which brands you choose to wear, but also by which magazines you buy and trust.
