Fashion boss rejects bid to ban thin models

Designer Zaldy, second from left, and Gwen Stefani with super-skinny models at New York Fashion Week.
Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:28 PM BST

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - One of the main backers of London Fashion Week on Sunday rejected government calls for a ban on wafer-thin models as the fashion industry faced a furore over its catwalks.

"Outright bans and indeed legislation is definitely not a route we want to go down," said Marks and Spencer chief executive Stuart Rose, who is chairman of the British Fashion Council that is organising the event which starts on Monday.

He was responding to a plea from Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell for London to follow Madrid's example and ban skinny models.

Madrid fashion organisers have taken the unprecedented step of rejecting underweight women, saying they wanted to project an image of beauty and health -- not a waif-like look.

The new Spanish rules say models with a body mass index (BMI) -- a ratio of height to weight -- below 18 are not allowed to appear at the shows.

Urging London to follow Madrid's example, Jowell said "The fashion industry's promotion of beauty as meaning stick thin is damaging to young girls' self-image and to their health.

"The fashion industry is hugely powerful in shaping the attitude of teenage girls and their feelings about themselves," she said in a statement.

Rejecting her call, Rose said "Are we going to ask people to walk through detectors for BMI and say I'm sorry you're rejected? That would be quite difficult."

"Body Mass is just an indication," he told Sky News. "It is just a guide. You cannot use it as an absolute."

"We just need to be reasonable, educate people, give them the facts and let them make up their own minds," Rose said.

But the move to ban skinny models could well gather momentum across the fashion world.

The mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, has said she will seek a similar ban for Milan Fashion Week -- starting in a week's time -- unless it can find a solution to "sick" looking models.

Fearing they could be targeted next, Milan model agency boss Riccardo Gay said "With those kind of rules, we'd have to turn away 80 percent of models. Naomi Campbell wouldn't be able to walk down the catwalk."

After Madrid's shock ban, Cathy Gould of New York's Elite modelling agency said the fashion industry was being used as scapegoat for illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.

But supporters of the ban were joined by Harry Potter author JK Rowling who told London's Evening Standard she did not want her children to grow up to be "empty-headed, self-obsessed clones".