Nicky's Rag Tales

Skin and Bones at London Fashion Week

Designers and Fashion Houses, big players in the Fashion Industry, still don’t get it. They don’t get the responsibility (or lack of) that many of them continue to display when they use catwalk models that are very obviously unwell.

At the age of 12 I was 5’9″ and at that time (many moons ago) a giant among my peers, always stooping to try to shrink into the background. My parents sent me to modelling school to learn deportment. It all sounds very grand now but was very important and the result was that it gave me huge confidence teaching me that it was good to ‘walk tall’! Following that I was stopped on the street by a very reputable Model agency. They however looked me up and down and proclaimed that I would have to lose weight, a subject that hadn’t entered my head until then. I never took them up on their offer but what followed was years of thinking that I was fat and huge issues resulting around food which of course resulted in me piling on the pounds and yo yo dieting for years. Years of constant worry and thinking about what I was going to eat or not going to eat. I spent 15 years of my life with those issues taking up my mental energy.

I am increasingly angered by many of the photographs that continue to come from the Catwalk collections. I want to see girls with shape that show off the clothes, not have them dripping off a skeletal frame.

I’m happy to say that those of us who work in the Fashion Industry here in Ireland have a somewhat more laid back approach and it was heartening that at the recent bloggers brunch all of us around the table looked healthy as we tucked into the hearty fare on offer.

So to all of you who wield influence and make decisions. Please, please take responsibility to identify models with food related illnesses, to help them and above all NOT to hire them.