From eight days ago in New York to this weekend in London, more and more Fashion Week watchers began to worry about a trend spotted on the catwalks: the return of super skinny.
However, since 2017, when, following various controversies targeting big names in luxury, a charter was signed by LVMH and Kering around the working conditions and well-being of models, we hoped for the time of top models "be beautiful (and lean) and shut up” gone.
In reality, even more than the initiative of the two competing groups, it is the pressure exerted by the younger generations and the body-positivism movement that has forced brands to make efforts on the representation of bodies in their communication.
New York Times
' Vanessa Friedman
accused of body shaming
The first to be alarmed by this backsliding were the Americans.
They had just been pioneers by parading the famous “plus-size” models (from size 44) over the past five years.
Last week, during the women's collections for fall-winter 2023-2024 presented in New York, the "plus size" supermodel Candice Huffine wondered in an Instagram story about the designers who had booked curvy girls in recent years. seasons, but "
completely omitted them from the conversation this year
," as BOF reported in its article "A New York Fashion Week Mystery: What Happened to All the Plus-Size Models?"
(“New York Fashion Week mystery: What happened to all the plus-size models?”)
Well-respected New York Times journalist Vanessa Friedman, who noted how skinny the Jason Wu show cast was in a tweet, was supported by some of her followers, but also accused of body shaming (i.e. say to criticize the appearance of these young girls) by its detractors.
In a second tweet, the journalist drove home the point quite bravely: "
I have been around a lot of people with eating disorders in my life, as well as a lot of naturally thin people, and the difference between the two is not hard to see. .
I can tell you that at least two of the models
(from the Jason Wu show, editor's note)
belonged to the first category.
»
Bella Hadid at the Coperni fashion show, in September 2022 Pierre Suu/Getty Images
Same disappointment for the defenders of the diversity of the bodies during London Fashion Week, returned to a great thinness.
Including with a designer like Nensi Dojaka, who made a name for herself two years ago, with her cut-out dresses worn, among other things, by round, even very round, models.
This time, on her podium, for two girls size 40 or 42, more than thirty show a frankly low body mass index.
And there is no reason for it not to be the same this week in Milan and in eight days in Paris, where this month of collections continues and ends.
The influence of Y2K and Heroine chic
How can this regression be explained?
First, we observe it much less in poster advertising campaigns or on social networks, which are more subject to reactions from the general public.
Brands are therefore more careful to show bodies, let's say, standard.
On the other hand, the parades, which remain the preserve of designers, are in terms of the canon of beauty much more linked to fashion effects.
However, the dominant trend of the last two seasons was none other than the Y2K (the revival of the 2000s), where low-waisted pants and bras call for a slim morphology.
While the chic heroine of the 1990s - androgynous, pale skin, dark circles and visible collarbone - seems to be making a comeback now, obviously on the runway of Celine by Hedi Slimane,
which this has always been the aesthetic, and probably in many others who should follow suit in the days to come.
Fashion has always loved thinness, especially since clothes (even badly cut) often fall "better" on a slender and slender silhouette.
Moreover, the girls who populate modeling agencies have for the most part, at their young age, naturally fine, even very fine, morphologies, and those who starve are fortunately a minority.
But it would not be a question of falling back into the excesses of the 1990s…
elsewhere, the girls who populate modeling agencies have for the most part, at their young age, naturally fine, even very fine, morphologies, and those who starve themselves are fortunately a minority.
But it would not be a question of falling back into the excesses of the 1990s…
elsewhere, the girls who populate modeling agencies have for the most part, at their young age, naturally fine, even very fine, morphologies, and those who starve themselves are fortunately a minority.
But it would not be a question of falling back into the excesses of the 1990s…
Kate Moss in the 1990s embodies the figure of heroine chic Runway
Behind this "trend", the Anglo-Saxons also see the influence of the phenomenon of Ozempic on TikTok, an antidiabetic hijacked to lose weight by young Americans - for the moment, its consumption would not have undergone an increase in France .
But wouldn't that just be the fashion cycle writ large?
After seasons of valuing curves, sometimes even excessively, if we judge by the obesity figures everywhere in the West, brands, the media, celebrities need to renew themselves.
Like Kim Kardashian, who changed the look on the body with her shapes (admittedly, sculpted by plastic surgery) and who nevertheless decided last spring to go on a drastic diet to fit into Marilyn Monroe's dress at the Met Gala.
Next May, the famous New York party will celebrate Karl Lagerfeld, who today is accused of his alleged fatphobia although he has never celebrated the bodies of anorexics in his parades.
He who had weighed up to 110 kg, had allowed himself to remember that being overweight was also dangerous for health.
A debate which is now also prohibited on pain of being accused of body shaming.
