fashion designers are artists

kama en herr seele, nrc handelsblad 21/12/15

in december last year, a discussion came up in the media about fashion designers having to be restricted in using skinny models. i was triggered on this subject by a cartoon in the nrc handelsblad, showing a giacometti sculpture with a pony-tail on a catwalk. more than twenty years ago i wrote my master thesis about the elongated and skinny figures in the art of the fin the siècle of the 19th century. were those artists ever forbidden by law to expose their art like the fashion designers are now restricted in several countries like france? of course, some gallery owners may have refused their art, but the law never obliged them to change their figures, paintings and sculptures.

in my opinion, fashion designers are artists too. so if they prefer their fashion to be shown by skinny models, they should be free to do that. of course, the health of the models is important, but they have their own responsibility and if they are not yet of age, their parents have that responsibility.

people like to refer to the danger of anorexia, but is not the danger of overweight is even bigger in these times. maybe the skinny models even have a good influence on the overweight. so that is no argument for me to restrict the artists by law.
of course the public can restrict them if they want to. if they do not like what they see, they can show that.

you know, a lot of fashion designers just seem to like the androgyn human being. it is their own physical ideal for their designs. probably like in the fin the siècle period, this body ideal will change, and even is already changing if you ask me. look at the video of lane bryant; her 2015 look for lingerie models and think of lena dunham or meghan trainor.

skip these laws and let trends, society, health, artists and ideals balance themselves, i would say.