NIAMH BETHANY RUANE: #clothesshowlive

at 13:44

Judging by the fact that one of the UK’s biggest, most accessible fashion events of the year attract the majority of audiences of whom are under sixteen it would be reasonably thinking that the Clothes Show Live would try set inspiring examples for young girls? Unfortunately, from what I saw, that was way too much to ask.

Lined up and continuously paraded under blinding spotlights for a plethora of gazing eyes to judge, were a string of scrawny, shy, pubescent girls. One was as underfed and pale as the next. Nervously shuddering and peering out from innocent eyes each waited for their turn to project a high pitch squeak into the microphone.

You’d be understandably mistaken to think I’m describing a slave auction. A showcase designed to sell pieces of meat as a commodity for fine profit. But no, it is a sad pretense that, though dehumanizing as it was, has seamlessly assimilated into the norm of mass culture so it may be accepted and applauded. Albeit, it’s a clever tactic utilized by Select Model Management who promise ‘great opportunity’ to young girls who take them up on their false offer of ‘making them the next Kate Moss’. They coerce girls as young as twelve through flattery, all the while with pound-signs in their eyes unknown to them, to stand on a raised platform to be judged and scrutinized while they ‘assess their potential’. And by ‘potential’ I mean, is their potential to be moulded into a commodity model agencies desire; a puppet or a blank-canvas faced doll that will not answer back and bow down to the pressures bestowed on them.

But the issue of young girls being exploited by the fashion industry is not a new one.

In 2001, the then up-and-coming designer Stella Cadente raised morally-conscious eyebrows when she sexualised girls as young as nine on her runway. Little girls were sent down the catwalk caked in makeup and dressed in horrifically inappropriate outfits from nightshirts, corsets and even wedding dresses. The show, which seemed to excuse such forms child pornography as ‘art’ or ‘fashion’, may as well as have advertised its audiences for paedophiles. It’s all part of growing up that girls experiment with dressing up and play around with makeup, but it is also of paramount importance that this is done in innocence and in private. For the fashion industry to exploit and sexualise this is purely irresponsible, dangerous and borderline sickening.

Clockwise, left to right: Terry Richardson photographs a suspiciously young model, 10 year-old Thylane Blondeau's spread in French Vogue, Richardson stripping off with Diesel models, an infant walking/crying his way down the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, a female model playing the subversive role to her male counterpart in another one of Richardson's sexually explicit pieces, a teenage and topless Kate Moss.

Ten years later and with the industry still learning nothing, child model Thylane Blondeau is featured on the pages of French Vogue. In some ways it is worse than Cadente’s exhibition; where Cadente is recognizing and parodying children desiring to be adults, Vogue is disguising them as convincingly sexualised adults. The ten year old is sprawled across leopard-print, clothed in gold, feet strapped in stilettos with a fierce glare; she stares into the barrel of the camera lens, and probably into the eyes of paedophiles. In another shot, she is sat cross-legged, yet again in heels and wears bright red-lipstick. There is no hint of her parodying an adult, she is an adult.

Finally, a year later the publication that propelled the controversial 10 year-old's modelling career promised that all editions of Vogue would stop featuring models under the age of 16 from 2012. However in the same year it was believed model Ondria Hardin slipped through the net when she was pictured in Vogue China for their August edition. In that same year Vogue continued to violate the alleged pact in place by photographing 15-year-old Sarah Kees in the September issue of Vogue Italia and 14-year-old Thairine Garcia in the September issue of Vogue Japan. Fast forward a year and 15-year-old Julia Borawska is given her own spread in Vogue Mexico. The photographer, Kevin Sinclair, who shot the underage model hilariously, released a statement pleading his innocence;

"I am aware of the age restrictions with Condé Nast. I was not aware the model was 15 years of age. When we communicated with her agency in Poland they never mentioned that she was so young. We were all under the impression that she was 18 years or older, not 15."

Considering that Borawska’s age is clearly visible on her Fashion Model Directory profile, her agency’s website and in the bio on her Instagram page it’s an insult to anyone’s intelligence to fabricate laughable excuses.

Clockwise, left to right: 15 year-old Ondria Hardin for Vogue China, minor Sarah Kees for Vogue Italia, a perverted Richardson posing with three naked women, a young model featured Storm model's website, a Sisley campaign shot by Richardson shows a woman being tied up.

In the USA sanctions have been placed in New York that has called for the protection of under 16 models in which they must be supervised by at all times, something which many agencies disregard and therefore leaving young girls vulnerable, and they must also abide by a curfew on school nights. Fines will be imposed upon any designer that fails to adhere by the restrictions in the hope that this will push them to use older models.

“We might actually have the novel experience of having grown women modelling women’s clothes at New York Fashion week” commented Susan Scafifi of Fordham University in New York.

Concerns are still present however. Many parents from Eastern European countries are taking their children to various fashion capitals in the hope they will find paid work. Young models are often inexperienced, have difficulties communicating in a foreign language and are forced to neglect their education due to continuous travelling and late-night fittings. A girl who manages to forge a modelling career through to adulthood is an incredibly lucky one. The supermodel is a rare commodity. It is not rare however that a model will work for a little as three years before the jobs start to dwindle and she is struck off from her agency.

The modelling world is tough, demanding and without an education to fall back on it can also be a cruel one.

Although some model agencies claim that using models under-16 is ‘harmless’ and provides them with a ‘good experience’ what really lies beneath the excuses is the language of money. Even booker Paola Baratto admitted;

“We are a service industry, and designers and photographers want these very young, very thin girls.”

The major reasons agencies use young girls is primarily that they are yet to hit puberty, their bodies are yet to assume curves and breasts and they are significantly cheaper to hire. There are a plethora of horror stories that come from models with first-hand experience who have documented the shocking pressures they have endured to push their bodies to extremes. Supermodel Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is among one of them, she revealed she was told to ‘eat one piece of sushi a day’ and though she politely told them to ‘go fuck yourself’ many girls under the age of 16 would not and will not have the courage to refuse industry insiders more than twice their age. It is not only detrimental to their health but also enforces an unachievable body-image as aesthetic norm on the women who are frequent readers of fashion media.

There are dangerous consequences of hiring pubescent models; aside from the huge pressure these young girls face to reject their body’s natural biology of becoming a woman it also attracts sexual exploitation. Take ‘fashion photographer’ Terry Richardson for example, just one of the high-profile names who have unimaginable power in the industry to make or break a models career. He has recently been catapulted into controversy after Rie Rasmussen, model-turned-filmmaker, confronted Richardson at a party during Paris Fashion Week;

“I told him what you do is completely degrading to women, I hope you know you only fuck girls because you have a camera, lots of fashionable contacts and get your pictures in Vogue.”

"He takes girls who are young, manipulates them to take their clothes off and takes pictures they will be ashamed of. They are too afraid to say no because their agency booked them on the job and are too young to stand up for themselves. His 'look' is girls who appear underage, abused, look like heroin addicts … I don't understand how anyone works with him."

Group sex, lesbian affairs and spanking are prominent themes among Richardson’s work. He’s admitted that often shoots result in models performing sex acts on him despite his protests;

“I don’t like to exploit anybody”.

Contradictory to Richardson’s proclamation there have been a number of models to declare otherwise. Former model Jamie Peck recounted that when she 19 years old she was asked to take her tampon out so Richardson could play with it and make “tampon tea” and insisted on being called “Uncle Terry”. Aside from stripping naked, Richardson is also have said to have “strongly suggested” to coerce Peck into “touching his terrifying penis” which led to his ejaculation…all over her. While it is unfortunate that photographers like Richardson detract from those who are genuinely talented, sexual predators like Richardson are a dangerous force over vulnerable, young girls. From either the fear of losing their job or being blacklisted in an industry that staunchly opposes any challenge to its power hierarchy, they are forced to conform.

One of the world’s most influential model agencies, Storm Models, an agency famously responsible for launching Kate Moss’s career (shot by Corinne Day when she was barely sixteen years old and endorsing what became known as ‘heroin chic’) features models as young as thirteen on their books, which poses the question; if restrictions imposed upon young girls are truly being enforced than why is there reason for agencies to employ them? The answer is plain and simple. It is because there is still a market for them. The Clothes Show Live is an obvious exemplar of that. It may be an innocent, light-hearted façade on the surface but there is a much darker undertone with a powerful capability of entrapping young girls through promises of fame and fortune that parents/carers need to be aware of.

Modelling is a dangerous territory even for a twenty-something, for a fifteen year-old the implications can be fatal.

Judging by the fact that one of the UK’s biggest, most accessible fashion events of the year attract the majority of audiences of whom are ...

NIAMH BETHANY RUANE

Does The Clothes Show Live Promote The Exploitation of Young Women?