A recent question intent on provoking much debate was put to us in our latest seminars. Does fashion do more harm than good? It's a question both insiders and outsiders of the industry have raised countless times, and with the constant media scrutiny I can't see it ever going away. Personally I would argue in favour of this statement, for a number of reasons. There are ethical considerations, the environment, the affect it has on consumers and social well-being.
Firstly let us consider the affect the fashion industry has on individuals. The most prolific way in which it has an impact is through the subject of body image. I did some research into the subject before writing and I must admit, some of the statistics and information I found was extremely eye opening, as well as shocking. Statistics from body image campaigners Body Gossip suggest 1 in 10 young people will develop an eating disorder before the age of 25, that's with 1.6 million already currently diagnosed in the UK. Furthermore, 3 children in an average British classroom are self-harming, and 30% of boys and 70% of girls aged 11-19 state the relationship with their body as their number one worry. I couldn't believe these numbers! Even more shocking is that children as young as 7 are beginning to show serious signs of body dissatisfaction, with some even expressing wishes to start dieting. 7 years old!! At 7 I still had a bit of puppy fat, and had no idea what a diet was. I was always taught the value of eating healthily and never even contemplated the idea of dieting (mainly because I love food so much), but seeing that sort of evidence for myself actually disturbed me. And it's no wonder children feel this way when 90% of British women feel body image anxiety, these adults are passing on this message to their children.
Clearly society is concerned with the issues surrounding body image, and the dangerous and unrealistic messages being sent to young women through fashion images in magazines, catwalk shows editorials, it's impossible to escape from it. The fashion industry is undeniably guilty for contributing and often reinforcing these body image insecurities, often through the controversy of models, specifically how thin and how young they are. It is hard to deny that clothes fall better on a slimmer frame, after all models are only really meant as hangers. But there is slim and then there is dangerously skinny. Designers are possibly the most guilty of fuelling this extreme underweight obsession. Designer outfits are created around a live in house skeleton, a model with the same measurements as a pubescent boy, yet 6 ft tall. These collections are then exhibited on the runway but tall, stick thin models, because that's how the designers want to see the clothes hang. Those sample pieces are then sent to magazines who have to then find models as equally tiny and skeletal thin to display in their pages for impressionable young women to see. And with models starving themselves to secure more bookings, it's a vicious cycle: they miss out of bookings so aim to lose more weight, then they get the bookings because they've lost that weight and try to lose even more to get more bookings, it's never ending! And it's scary the extent some of them will go to to stay skinny. Often living off a diet of cigarettes and diet coke, some even resort to eating tissues, apparently because they expand and fill the stomach. Tissues really?! It seems insane! And the industry encourages this. Model agency's don't bat and eyelid at these girls obviously suffering from eating disorders, and instead feed them the bi line that the skinnier they are, they better the model they are. We can't though forget the responsibility of magazine editors for distributing these unhealthy images on a mass scale, exposing millions of suggestible women and girls to what the fashion industry considers the ideal body. There's a correlation between the rise in eating disorders in the public, and eating disorders on the runway. It's scary the influence that fashion can have on society, and even scarier when it's not a good influence. Maybe we need to take a step back from looking to fashion so much for inspiration, and concentrate on the real world instead.
