Skinny models kicked out of fashion show

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Fifteen models were kicked out of a Rome fashion show overnight for being too thin, sparking new debate on anorexia in the fashion industry.

"I asked that girls with abnormal measurements shouldn't work ... [and] had to fire 15 who were under [French] size 36 [US size eight]," Raffaella Curiel told reporters.

"One girl fainted during the trials," he said. "I had to give her a ham sandwich."

Curiel says his fashion house wants to respect rules developed in December to combat anorexia among fashion models.

"It's not our fault if [agencies] send us girls who are too skinny."

Under the new rules, girls under 16 cannot take to the catwalk, and models must produce a certificate proving that they have no eating disorders.

Panel findings

Meanwhile, a panel of fashion and health experts in the UK says girls aged under 16 should be banned from catwalk modelling to protect them from eating disorders and sexual exploitation.

Older teenagers also need more protection, including chaperones at shows, says the Model Health Inquiry - a group investigating models' health.

The panel says there is a trend for the industry to use younger models, who are more vulnerable to eating disorders such as anorexia.

"There was also strongly expressed concern that it is profoundly inappropriate that girls under 16 ... should be portrayed as adult women," said Baroness Kingsmill, chair of the the panel.

"The risk of sexualising these children was high and designers could risk charges of sexual exploitation."

The inquiry was set up by the British Fashion Council, which runs London Fashion Week, in the wake of a long-running controversy over super thin, size zero models.

Health

The panel has rejected the idea of weighing models and banning those under a certain weight.

It received mixed evidence on whether models should have tests to assess their body mass index, a measure of fat.

Many models told the inquiry that they feared losing work because they were not thin enough.

As well as eating disorders, the panel highlighted health risks from stress, substance abuse and poor working conditions.

"We have grave concerns about other health areas, such as drug and alcohol abuse and the stress caused by working conditions for model," the panel's interim report said.

"We are also concerned that modelling is very much a hidden profession with very little transparency about the working conditions that many models have to endure."

The panel wants better training for designers and agents to help them spot models with eating disorders.

There should be a clampdown on drugs and smoking backstage and models should have access to healthy food, it says.

- AFP/Reuters

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