Fashion world

Stephanie Naumoska was a contestant in the Miss Universe-Australia pageant.  Her very thin figure generated controversy.  At 5-foot-11, she reportedly weighed in at 108 pounds.  One look at her and I knew that I needed to discuss her looks, but not because of her thinness.

At the recent Spring/Summer 2009 Paris Fashion Week, Jean Paul Gaultier had 51-year-old former high-fashion model Inès de la Fressange model one of his designs on the runway.

Here is a news item that has gotten some attention in the mainstream media.  Australian researcher Phillippa Diedrichs conducted a study that found that using very thin women models does not increase the likelihood of women buying the advertised product compared to using women within a healthy weight range.  The study involved making a series of advertisements for underwear, a haircare product and a party dress, modeled by a size-8 woman and a roughly size-12 woman.  See an example below.

Video time.

Readers brought these two examples to my attention.

The clowns at CNN recently released a video on whether thin is still in in the fashion world.

When I heard that a fashion model fell to her death in New York City, apparently committing suicide, the first thing that came to my mind was murder even though I didn’t know who this model was and the exact circumstances of her death.  This is a reasonable a priori assumption.  After all, New York City, one of the headquarters for organized international crime, has a very large number of criminal lowlife.  After reading about how Ruslana Korshunova died, I’d bet she was murdered.

A video featuring ‘fat-legged’ Ali Michael on MSNBC and a discussion of her disordered eating behavior in the current edition of Teen Vogue is featured below.

Harriet Olivia has the following to say about fashion illustration –