Normally I wouldn't post this, but on the heels of our Dior Homme discussion, ta-da!!! Hedi - you fucker - look what you've done!!! BTW, is that our own Agent L quoted in the article?! [<:o)]
Link to article
The Vanishing Point
The Vanishing Point
CREDIT Hedi Slimane or blame
him. The type of men Mr. Slimane promoted when he first came aboard at
Dior Homme some years back (he has since left) were thin to the point
of resembling stick figures; the clothes he designed were
correspondingly lean. The effects of his designs on the men?s wear
industry were radical and surprisingly persuasive. Within a couple of
seasons, the sleekness of Dior Homme suits made everyone else?s designs
look boxy and passé, and so designers everywhere started reducing their
silhouettes.
Then a funny thing happened. The models were also downsized. Where
the masculine ideal of as recently as 2000 was a buff 6-footer with
six-pack abs, the man of the moment is an urchin, a wraith or an
underfed runt.
Nowhere was this more clear than at the recent men?s wear shows in
Milan and Paris, where even those inured to the new look were
flabbergasted at the sheer quantity of guys who looked chicken-chested,
hollow-cheeked and undernourished. Not altogether surprisingly, the
trend has followed the fashion pack back to New York
Wasn?t it just a short time ago that the industry was up in arms
about skinny models? Little over a year ago, in Spain, designers were
commanded to choose models based on a healthy body mass index;
physicians were installed at Italian casting calls; Diane von Furstenberg, the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, called a conference to ventilate the issue of unhealthy body imagery and eating disorders among models.
The models in question were women, and it?s safe to say that they
remain as waiflike as ever. But something occurred while no one was
looking. Somebody shrunk the men.
?Skinny, skinny, skinny,? said Dave Fothergill, a director of the
agency of the moment, Red Model Management. ?Everybody?s shrinking
themselves.?
This was abundantly clear in the castings of models for New York
shows by Duckie Brown, Thom Browne, Patrik Ervell, Robert Geller and
Marc by Marc Jacobs,
where models like Stas Svetlichnyy of Russia typified the new norm. Mr.
Svetlichnyy?s top weight, he said last week, is about 145 pounds. He is
6 feet tall with a 28-inch waist.
?Designers like the skinny guy,? he said backstage last Friday at
the Duckie Brown show. ?It looks good in the clothes and that?s the
main thing. That?s just the way it is now.?
Even in Milan last month at shows like Dolce & Gabbana
and Dsquared, where the castings traditionally ran to beefcake types,
the models were leaner and less muscled, more light-bodied. Just as
tellingly, Dolce & Gabbana?s look-book for spring 2008 (a catalog
of the complete collection) featured not the male models the label has
traditionally favored ? industry stars like Chad White and Tyson
Ballou, who have movie star looks and porn star physiques ? but men who
look as if they have never seen the inside of a gym.
?The look is different from when I started in the business eight
years ago,? Mr. Ballou said last week during a photo shoot at the Milk
Studios in lower Manhattan. In many of the model castings, which tend
to be dominated by a handful of people, the body style that now
dominates is the one Charles Atlas made a career out of trying to
improve.
?The first thing I did when I moved to New York was immediately
start going to the gym,? the designer John Bartlett said. That was in
the long-ago 1980s. But the idea of bulking up now seems retro when
musicians and taste arbiters like Devendra Banhart boast of having
starved themselves in order to look good in clothes.
?The eye has changed,? Mr. Bartlett said. ?Clothes now are tighter
and tighter. Guys are younger and younger. Everyone is influenced by
what Europe shows.?
What Europe (which is to say influential designers like Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons at Jil Sander) shows are men as tall as Tom Brady but who wear a size 38 suit.
?There are designers that lead the way,? said James Scully, a
seasoned casting agent best known for the numerous modeling discoveries
he made when he worked at Gucci under Tom Ford.
?Everyone looks to Miuccia Prada for the standard the way they used to
look at Hedi Slimane. Once the Hedi Slimanization got started, all
anyone wanted to cast was the scrawny kid who looked like he got sand
kicked in his face. The big, great looking models just stopped going to
Europe. They knew they?d never get cast.?
For starters, they knew that they would never fit into designers?
samples. ?When I started out in the magazine business in 1994, the
sample size was an Italian 50,? said Long Nguyen of Flaunt magazine,
referring to a size equivalent to a snug 40-regular.
?That was an appropriate size for a normal 6-foot male,? Mr. Nguyen
said. Yet just six years later ? coincidentally at about the time Mr.
Slimane left his job as the men?s wear designer at YSL for Dior Homme ?
the typical sample size had dwindled to 48. Now it is 46.
?At that point you might as well save money and just go over to the
boy?s department,? Mr. Nguyen said from his seat in the front row of
the Benjamin Cho show, which was jammed as usual with a selection of
reedy boys in Buffalo plaid jackets and stovepipe jeans, the same types
that fill Brooklyn clubs like Sugarland. ?I?m not really sure if
designers are making clothes smaller or if people are smaller now,? Mr
Nguyen said.
According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Americans are taller and much heavier today than 40 years ago. The
report, released in 2002, showed that the average height of adult
American men has increased to 5-9 ½ in 2002 from just over 5-8 in 1960.
The average weight of the same adult man had risen dramatically, to 191
pounds from 166.3.
Nowadays a model that weighed in at 191 pounds, no matter how
handsome, would be turned away from most agencies or else sent to a fat
farm.
Far from inspiring a spate of industry breast-beating, as occurred
after the international news media got hold of the deaths of two young
female models who died from eating disorders, the trend favoring very
skinny male models has been accepted as a matter or course.
?I personally think that it?s the consumer that?s doing this, and
fashion is just responding,? said Kelly Cutrone, the founder of
People?s Revolution, a fashion branding and production company. ?No one
wants a beautiful women or a beautiful man anymore.?
In terms of image, the current preference is for beauty that is not
fully evolved. ?People are afraid to look over 21 or make any statement
of what it means to be adult,? Ms. Cutrone said.
George Brown, a booking agent at Red Model Management, said: ?When I
get that random phone call from a boy who says, ?I?m 6-foot-1 and I?m
calling from Kansas,? I immediately ask, ?What do you weigh?? If they
say 188 or 190, I know we can?t use him. Our guys are 155 pounds at
that height.?
Their waists, like that of Mr. Svetlichnyy, measure 28 or 30 inches.
They have, ideally, long necks, pencil thighs, narrow shoulders and
chests no more than 35.5 inches in circumference, Mr. Brown said. ?It?s
client driven,? he added. ?That?s just the size that blue-chip
designers and high-end editorials want.?
For Patrik Ervell?s show on Saturday, the casting brief called for
new faces and men whose bodies were suited to a scarecrow silhouette.
?We had to measure their thighs,? Mr. Brown said.
For models like Demián Tkach, a 26-year-old Argentine who was
recently discovered by the photographer Bruce Weber, the tightening
tape measure may cut off a career.
Mr. Tkach said that when he came here from Mexico, where he had been
working: ?My agency asked me to lose some muscle. I lost a little bit
to help them, because I understand the designers are not looking for a
male image anymore. They?re looking for some kind of androgyne.?
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