I came across this article on EW's website this morning. I'm don't like the message this is sending. I don't begrudge the actual male model for taking whatever work he can get in an extremely competitive business.
But I think it's it bad enough that designers use female models with bodies that only vaguely resemble a female norm (to me, many runway models look like women who have been stretched like silly puddy.) I know that clothing tends to lay better with very little curves on a person's body. But now some designers want to really use models actually with no hips or breasts?
Androgynous model poised to highlight New York's Fashion Week
Image Credit: Pierre Verdy/AFP/Getty Images; Mike Coppola/Getty
Australian model Andrej Pejic has a unique look. Well, technically the 20-year-old fashion star has two unique looks. See, Pejic, whos in New York for Fashion Week, is the rare model who can walk the runway as either a man or a woman. Hes already appeared on the covers of numerous fashion magazines a provocative topless shot that appeared on Dossier nearly became an incident and even inspired a show by Jean-Paul Gaultier in which the designer showcased the gender-bending model as a bride. Watch an Associated Press clip below.
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I'm not sure I did the video right. Here's a link to the page it was on.
I think the runway fashion scenario is so far removed from most people's reality that this is a non-issue. With advertising that's aimed at a mass audience, I might feel differently.
I see it as a slippery slope. I don't personally get my valuation or even look to fashion runways as an example for how I want to look. But things trickle down, you know?
I don't know how many of you watch Project Runway, but last season had a designer who actually said on camera that he thought his model was too fat because he wants to design only for someone with no "boobs or hips." He wasn't talking small frames/features, he literally meant he didn't want a woman with any breasts or hips. And when he got to do his runway (he wasn't a finalist so his runway didn't actually air, but you could view it on line) his models were the closest approximation to straight lines I'd ever seen. It troubled me that this could be an emerging thought in fashion, and not just one idiot young designer's wacky idea.
I do get ticked off at this. I realize the runway is not reality and no one thinks it is, but when you are designing women's clothes, why go so far out of your way to get a body that is the least like a woman's? I mean, if one or two designers are doing it then I think it's just a dumb stunt - more about the press than actually preferring the male model's figure. But if it's a "trend," it does bother me. Why not get a female model that has the body type you want to design clothes for? And if that doesn't exist, then why design for it under the guise of "women's clothing"?
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Fashion is art you live your life in. - Devil Wears Prada | formerly ttara123
Because I think designers want to look at fashion as art, with a body as the canvas, and a runway show as an art gallery. If nothing else it underscores the ridiculousness of fashion as a commercial industry. As a non-commercial art form I have no problem with it.
I agree, if it was art, I couldn't care less. The way I look at it, art is created by the artist for the purpose of expressing his or her vision. Whether I agree or can even appreciate that artist's vision is irrelevant to the art itself. But I think that fashion is created to express a vision, but also to sell versions of the original vision for corporate profit. Fashion is not just one person showcasing his or her ideas. It's a person who works for a larger corporation (ie. Dior) who's job it is to produce a seasonal look that the corporation can sell. It's an industry that has the ability to directly influence a mass audience (eventually.) The trickle down effect of the runway can decide what sort of clothes will be available for purchase in the local mall that season and it can decide what sort of photos we are going to see in magazines.