When did it die? When did our collective disgust at the sickness and sicked-up stomach juices that fuel the fashion industry get replaced by an oh-so-ironic appreciation? When did even most liberals and feminists stop snubbing it and start wrestling their way to the rope-line in search of a goody bag? London Fashion Week starts later this week, a parade of the Emperor’s Designer Clothes, made of tinfoil or feathers or rubber. A few years ago, I was sent backstage to cover this event - and it took more than a few London Un-Fashion Weeks of my own to recover from what I saw. I was forced to peer for the first time into the industry that is making so many of my female friends ill.
At the end of the catwalk, there stood a parade of young women who looked like they were about to collapse. On camera, fashion models look worryingly thin. In the (non-)flesh, they look so emaciated that the only other place I have ever seen people like them is reporting on African famines. Their eyes are glazed, shut-down because they have no fuel to run on. These coked-out jangles of gristle and bone were smeared with cosmetics, squeezed into a dress design that appeared to be made of rubbish bags, and pushed out to shimmy down the catwalk, to be applauded by the likes of Kate Moss and Hugh Grant. When they stumbled back, they appeared faint and listless, and leaned against a wall, looking like they needed an IV drip.
