UK Edition
French fashion giants ban super-skinny models from catwalks and adverts
Two top French fashion groups with labels from Christian Dior to Gucci are to ban super-skinny models from catwalks and advertising worldwide, following a string of scandals over anorexia and mistreatment.
LVMH - the luxury giant with the world's biggest biggest market capitalisation - and Kering will also stop hiring girls under 16-year-old to wear adult clothes at shoots or events.
The pair, whose fashion labels include Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney and Louis Vuitton, unveiled the rules in a charter "to ensure the well-being of models" ahead of New York Fashion Week, which opens on Thursday.
It stipulates that they will ban their designers using size 32 models under the French system - size XXS or size zero in the US or four in Britain.
From now on, they will only use women who are size 34 - a British size six - or over. Men must to be size 44, UK size 34, or over.
The text also bans serving alcohol to models under 18 and stipulates they require a guardian or chaperone present at all times.
In May, a French law hit the statutes books requiring models to present a doctor's certificate proving they are healthy to work according to a range of criteria, including body mass index but also age, gender and body shape. Fashion agencies face fines of up to €75,000 or imprisonment of up to six months if they breach the law.
While the French law says the medical certificate can go back two years, the LVMH and Kering charter requires the document to be no older than six months.
"Respecting the dignity of all women has always been both a personal commitment for me and a priority for Kering as a group," the company's billionaire chairman Francois-Henri Pinault said in a statement.
"We hope to inspire the entire industry to follow suit, thus making a real difference in the working conditions of fashion models industry-wide," he added.
Fresh French legislation obliging magazines to label as "touched up" images which are altered to "make the silhouette narrower or bulkier" will come into force on October 1.
The charter follows a string of recent controversies in the fashion industry, most recently in February's Paris Fashion Week; two leading casting directors were accused of making at least 150 women wait for several hours in a stairway in the dark to audition for a show by the label Balenciaga, owned by Kering.
The American casting director James Scully blasted his rivals as "serial abusers" who were "sadistic and cruel" to models.
Earlier this year, Saint Laurent caused outrage with a poster campaign around Paris.
In those pictures, a reclining woman in a fur coat and fishnet tights was pictured opening her legs, while another extremely thin model was photographed in a leotard and roller skate stilettos bending over a stool.
France's advertising authority denounced them as part of a disturbing trend in fashion promoting "porno-chic" and the label was ordered to remove them.
The industry has long been accused of promoting unattainable beauty ideals that are harmful both to models and those who try and emulate them.
Last year, French former supermodel Victoire Dauxerre lifted the lid on the dangers of seeking to fit into size 32-24 clothes, which led her to adopt a diet of three apples a day and laxatives in a tell-all book.
Another French model, Isabelle Caro, fronted a shocking anti-anorexia campaign during Milan fashion week in 2007 before she died from the disease three years later at the age of 28.
"As the leader in the luxury sector, we believe it is our role to be at the forefront of this initiative," Antoine Arnault, a board member of LVMH and son of owner Bernard Arnault.
"Many people didn't even know that size 32 existed," said Mr Arnault, explaining that designers were at fault for basing new garments with such ultra-skinny models in mind.
"That's finished now, the size will be 34 and above, which is already quite small," he told AFP.
He confirmed that LVMH would stop hiring under-16 minors, a common practice in the industry, saying: "A young girl of 15 doesn't have the faculties to take on the difficult world of fashion and modelling."
In 2015, Israeli model Sofia Mechetner, then aged 14, featured in a catwalk show for Dior, while Karl Lagerfeld said in March that he thought girls of 15 were old enough to model.