Size 0?

It turns out that the new model size for haute couture is now Size 0. The April Vogue notes that when top model Natalia Vodianova was 19, she was 5'10" and weighed 117 and had a BMI of 16.8. But several designer houses complained about her weight! When she weighed 106 pounds and her hair was beginning to fall out, she had a BMI of 15.2, which is off the charts. Designers have to seek increasingly young women--16 or younger--and then their careers are over by the time they are 18, unless they force themselves to essentially stop eating. The end of the article quotes designer Derek Lam as saying that he is rethinking things in the light of the spotlight on anorexia among models, "Already I am giving my clothes more structure this year and making it less about something limp on a rail." A look at Lam's spring collection reveals that he is almost celebrating 1920s retro, the birth decade for the "rail," which had a resurgence in the 1960s and now again in this decade. One wonders who designers are designing for--certainly not for women. This is but an introduction to reflections on the era of the 1920s, coming soon.