It’s time to stop buying clothes from designers who don’t represent our bodies

Many catwalks book one lone larger model, in what even the most generous reading would conclude is a cynical box-ticking trick. Worse, it’s one that creates a polemic on the catwalk: “fat” versus “thin”, and makes those watching subliminally choose one or the other. Why can’t we have more mid-range, healthy-looking models? Size 10/12/14-ish, say? Then we’d get an idea of how these clothes work on women like us. (Maybe we’d find a lot of them don’t, but that would be helpful too – especially to the brands trying to sell them in an increasingly tough market.)

Too much to ask? Fifteen years after Alexandra Shulman sent an open letter to fashion designers, imploring them not to provide samples for Vogue shoots that were so tiny that even Hollywood celebrities couldn’t fit into them, slim is once again being ousted on the catwalks by the alarmingly thin, and the very occasionally size 18 or over?

None of this is the fault of the models themselves, many of whom will be healthy young women with metabolisms like furnaces and steely iron will. A highly visible minority, however, are all too clearly not well. I’ve seen enough shows to know the difference between a naturally skinny 20-year-old who eats carefully because that’s part of her job, and someone who’s seriously anorexic. What’s truly astounding is the absence of any duty of care. What are the models’ agents thinking when they see their charges looking so dramatically underweight? Or massively overweight? Why do some designers like this look? And how come mid-weight is such an unfashionable, high-fashion concept?

Partly it’s because catwalks have become simulacra of extremes, especially in Paris. It’s not enough to have big-shouldered jackets at Saint Laurent. They must be cartoon-like. If volume’s in, then it must be Albert Hall-sized. Let’s not do normal. Cast models who look prepubescent or 80 – but skip middle-aged. Let’s be Divine (the plus-sized late actor and drag queen who died in 1988, aged 42, and has been an icon for some in the fashion world ever since). Swimming in wild water is the only way some brands know how to operate – an inexpensive fast track to dominating the next two-hour news cycle. Honest to God, I have had many conversations – usually with males working in the industry – who think “harping on about size” on the catwalk is “boring” and “mundane”. The idea of a mid-size woman on a catwalk would probably bring on a fit of the vapors.