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Female fashion models and stereotypes

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  • ErnstLudwig
    Member
    • Oct 2011
    • 62

    #16
    Simply a business decision to save money?
    Just design one size fits all (+/- minor alterations after acually casting the models). Then wait for the preorders after the show and evaluate what actually goes into production. Hell they save money by not providing fitting shoes quite often.


    The beauty aspect is another thing... symmetry especially in the face, waist to hip ratio... those are some evolutionary conserved measurements.
    However I don't think it is that important in fashion anymore, the androgyny trend is common for both sexes. And I remember the same complaints that "actual men" should be more often present on the runway and not only those "drug addict" types.

    Comment

    • zamb
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2006
      • 5834

      #17
      I think people are so jaded by the current state of things they think they often hear something other than what is actually being said..........

      no one is arguing for fat overweight models.........
      i think rilu (among others) is taking about diversity

      there are lots of really beautiful and interesting women who can be used as models who don't actually fit the standard now used by many in casting models.
      all she is saying is that since designer challenge so many other things in their work, why not this?
      “You know,” he says, with a resilient smile, “it is a hard world for poets.”
      .................................................. .......................


      Zam Barrett Spring 2017 Now in stock

      Comment

      • kirie
        Junior Member
        • Dec 2011
        • 20

        #18
        I misunderstood a little, I was speaking more in generalities than the specific designers primarily discussed here.
        it would be interesting to see more non standard body shapes being used by avant garde designers, but honestly I don't think we'll see it happening soon- maybe in the next 5-10 years, but it seems like body types in fashion go through decades of popularity. We had the scarily anorexic models in the late 90's-early 20's, and they're slowly moving out of that to the tomboyish thin girls that don't look incredibly ill. It'll take a dramatic change in the emotion behind the major collections before the body ideal start changing though.

        Additionally, hiring "unusual" shaped models usually means you're hiring outside of the agencies (many of which have multi year contracts with big name fashion houses to provide girls for their shows). I can't even imagine how much of a headache it would be to try to cast models outside of agencies.

        as a side note- no agency I've ever worked with will allow you to even go to fashion week castings if your hips are over 35", and even that's a stretch. They're usually pretty strict on the 24" waist, 34" hip measurements.

        Comment

        • christianef
          Senior Member
          • Feb 2009
          • 747

          #19
          i think itd be as easy to scout women who do not belong to agencies as it is to scout men - something dior homme was famous for (random sk8er boys on the street, kids in bars) and is commonly seen in boutique postings here and elsewhere with hometown heroes like the addict bsr christian and heirloom. a few womens boutiques come as close to what rilu is getting at like eva gentry uses a pretty everyday chick for the fit model etc and some others who probably just dont want to pay for a model aha

          Comment

          • MJRH
            Senior Member
            • Nov 2006
            • 418

            #20
            Originally posted by syed View Post
            I think with womenswear that if a designer changes things up with the models, everyone sees that and not the clothing.

            ...

            It turns into a debate removed from the collection...
            This. But rilu, I'm with you on this, as obviously many others here are. Ever since I was a kid I remember wondering why the hell all the models look so much like each other, always pissed me off and still does.

            re: the H&M thing, I'm sorry this may be going on a tangent, I'd like to quote Ms. Nadya Lev of Coilhouse who has a really great take on the whole virtual models thing:

            even though H&M’s online catalogue conforms to the same beauty standard as any other big fashion retailer, this technology actually has the potential to subvert the paradigm altogether.

            Imagine an online shop where your preferred weight/height/measurements are used to generate 3D models of the bodies that you want to see. Imagine if there was an API for this that could be used across all online clothing stores you visit, so that no matter what site you were looking at, the models appeared the way that you wanted them to. Standardized beauty ideals would become less relevant, because people would have greater control over their exposure to them.

            In the short term, it may seem like computer-generated models reinforce a homogenous beauty standard. In the long term, this technology may pave the way towards greater body diversity and inclusiveness.
            Full article. On that note, imagine an interactive fashion show where you could program the models to your specifications..!
            ain't no beauty queens in this locality

            Comment

            • christianef
              Senior Member
              • Feb 2009
              • 747

              #21
              Originally posted by rilu
              Neither of the reasons mentioned above in this thread for the tall, thin, beautiful, young female models explains why things could not be as diverse as Yohji Yamamoto's men's SS '12 runway, except the fact that it's too risky to play around in the same way with female models. And that's a way too lame excuse, taking all the other challenges the designers we are talking about are ready to face.
              the assumption and expectation that things ought to be as diverse as a handful of mens collections is slightly lame too, though. sure they could be but why do they have to be? people like anna wintour are glorified and photographed all the time in a fashion context i dont think regular women are being discriminated against by not being cast in shows. look at jak and jil lots of love for the cougars. in interviews ann demeulemeester has noted that she designs her men's collections a lot differently than the womans noting that men are a lot simpler and, to paraphrase, dont really give a shit. if you carry this simple logic to casting perhaps thats why she felt more comfortable using older men at the ending of one of her mens shows as opposed to older women where the attitude is less transferable.

              Comment

              • Fuuma
                Senior Member
                • Sep 2006
                • 4050

                #22
                Originally posted by christianef View Post
                i think itd be as easy to scout women who do not belong to agencies as it is to scout men - something dior homme was famous for (random sk8er boys on the street, kids in bars) and is commonly seen in boutique postings here and elsewhere with hometown heroes like the addict bsr christian and heirloom. a few womens boutiques come as close to what rilu is getting at like eva gentry uses a pretty everyday chick for the fit model etc and some others who probably just dont want to pay for a model aha
                Going beyond that many agencies for men specialized in weird looking dudes...
                Selling CCP, Harnden, Raf, Rick etc.
                http://www.stylezeitgeist.com/forums...me-other-stuff

                Comment

                • between
                  Member
                  • Oct 2011
                  • 70

                  #23
                  well there are some models out there whose looks are definitely not conventional, but who have also managed to score a fair amount of jobs for some of the big names.
                  i'm thinking of jamie bochert for instance (who is by far my favorite model), or chloe memesevic.

                  i also know that raf used to pick his models on the street: he chose people with whom he felt a connection, people who he though embodied his vision (hence the isolated heroes series). but that ties with what all of you have said: it's easier to do such thing for menswear than womenswear.

                  Comment

                  • 525252
                    Senior Member
                    • Dec 2010
                    • 246

                    #24
                    thread revival!

                    From experiences doing test shoots with agencies for a while, matters of race, weight, height never really cause much concern for me. Despite the somewhat irking disparities in those categories and even socio-demographics, I find I'd rather shoot the girls signed to model agencies. Its convenient because street casting is actually quite difficult if you aren't making a point of doing it, don't have to put up with formalities of modelling every single time with people who don't know about image rights etc.

                    And most importantly when we look at diversity to its limit, labels of colour and size etc. are ultimately superficial. What about the knobbly kneed or the super freckly or perky boobed people or the dudes with weirdly visible veins?? No bodies are the same, and it sucks when they're made to look that way in fashion media. Its dehumanising and isolating, but thats what's great (and terrible too I guess) about fashion, it allows people to group together while differentiating themselves from others.

                    Comment

                    • Voltairine
                      Junior Member
                      • Jul 2012
                      • 14

                      #25
                      Originally posted by kirie View Post

                      Additionally, hiring "unusual" shaped models usually means you're hiring outside of the agencies (many of which have multi year contracts with big name fashion houses to provide girls for their shows). I can't even imagine how much of a headache it would be to try to cast models outside of agencies.

                      as a side note- no agency I've ever worked with will allow you to even go to fashion week castings if your hips are over 35", and even that's a stretch. They're usually pretty strict on the 24" waist, 34" hip measurements.
                      Aren't there agencies who specialize in "normal" looking people for advertisements and commercials outside the fashion industry?

                      Comment

                      • TheDivinitus
                        Senior Member
                        • Jul 2011
                        • 103

                        #26
                        Looks like Rick Owens in today's SS14 RTW finally did some...

                        Originally posted by rilu View Post
                        Here's a question that's been puzzling some of us here for a while now, and which Lumina and I talked about yesterday in a nice cafe in Antwerp :)
                        How come that the majority of designers discussed on here - who work at the frontiers of fashion design and who dare to challenge various aspects of it - don't dare to challenge the type of female models that represent their clothes on a runway? While with male fashion models this has already taken place (see, for example Yohji Yamamoto's SS 2009 show), hardly anyone dared to do the same when it comes to women. If I remember right, Vivienne Westwood partially challenged this habit with less slim models, and MMM recently had some more senior female models, but aside from these exceptions, the situation has mainly been unchanged.

                        The main question here is not why not diverging from the mainstream for the sake of certain ethical or political reasons (though that's an interesting question as well). What I am primarily interested in is the question, why are slim, young, tall, conventionally pretty models aesthetically more appealing for this niche in fashion design than other female types? Wouldn't a real challenge be to make a not-so-conventionally-beautiful person looking in an interesting way? And in any case, wouldn't, for example, an older, gray haired woman make an incredible impression on a runway? Why has this aspect of fashion, even in this niche, remained so incredibly mainstream?
                        blog

                        Comment

                        • OliverG
                          Banned
                          • Sep 2013
                          • 48

                          #27
                          Originally posted by Rosenrot View Post
                          ^^ You can sell fantasy without super skinny models. With that said, the ideal (fantasized) woman changes over the course of time. The question is, who shaped the preferences of the masses? Is it the media, or is the media merely responding to that people truly want? Chances are our preferences are subsconsciously shaped by what's shoved down our throat, not vice versa, so in that case the media has the power to change the trends in modelling as well, no?

                          Yes, I think the fact that our ideological vision of beauty changes over time, and with our lifestyles, is not to be dismissed. Robust women used to be considered sexy, maybe it had something to do with the survival instint, big meant healthy, you didn't want some skinny girl who was gonna die during the first winter (LOL but true)...Today we have a life of leisure, relatively speaking, and maybe its a naturally evolved consensus that thin women are more desirable. Is the media a mirror for society, or does it dictate society? I think we can certainly see with fashion that some things are dictated to a certan extent. You show people something enough times, they will start to like it, no matter how ridiculous it is...

                          That said, I think that designers have no real desire to change the body type that they use to model their clothing simply because they are looking for a frame for the clothing itself...

                          For the record, the whole skinny model thing started with Twiggy in the 60s... I saw a documentary on it not too long ago...

                          Comment

                          • TheDivinitus
                            Senior Member
                            • Jul 2011
                            • 103

                            #28
                            Could you please tell what docu it was? Thanks.
                            blog

                            Comment

                            • ahn
                              Senior Member
                              • Jul 2012
                              • 293

                              #29
                              Perhaps Twiggy is credited with the initiation of the super-skinny model as a standard, but I was very interested to read in this link Gracia (Rosenrot) posted on twitter http://www.businessoffashion.com/201...e-times-3.html an excerpt of which:
                              And in that Jean Patou was not mistaken. His eyes were raised to a distant dress horizon which he understood thoroughly, making him the only couturier in Paris able to claim to have seen fashion’s first future shock of the twentieth century: the modernity of the streamlined, svelte silhouette.

                              We are talking of the dress revolution called sportswear, whereby good taste in fashion was to be about elimination and simplification. Based on a modern cut that gave women freedom and made them more conscious of the importance of the slim shape than ever before in history, it was a radical and permanent change of step.

                              Which begs the question - which came first, the chicken or the egg? Is it the skinny model we should blame or is it the fashions that force the figures?
                              some do it fast, some do it better in smaller amounts.

                              Comment

                              • fadetogrey
                                Senior Member
                                • Apr 2009
                                • 311

                                #30
                                To me the popularization of Skinny models- more specifically boyish, skinny all over (let’s not forget about the impossibly skinny corseted waists throughout history) girls in the 1960s feels like a reaction (or rebellion) to the socially acceptable norm of feminine beauty from the decade(s) before- the voluptuous, womanly bombshell with full breasts and hips. I think how different the clothes of the 60s were from the 50s and the drastic switch in ideal figure for modelling those clothes somewhat makes sense.

                                Social freedoms made wearing more revealing/tight fitting clothing more acceptable… the jeans so tight in the 70s that women needed pliers to pull up the zipper, barely there bikinis, plus the popularization of exercise (let’s get physical!) in the 80s, the “ideal woman” got thinner over time.

                                That "Heroin chic" thin androgyny in the 90s countered the comparatively healthy-looking (though still thin) supermodels (Linda, Naomi, Cindy, etc) But I’m not sure how it has evolved to such a rail thin pre-pubescent ideal that it is today, and that few are rebelling against.

                                In short I think the chicken and egg happened at the same time... influencing each other, though in my opinion I think that clothing has slightly more of an impact on body shape than the reverse.

                                Comment

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