Monday, March 5, 2012

Too fat? Next Top Model winner sues agency

Ananda Marchildon claims Elite withheld Dutch competition prize money and sacked her because her hips were 2cm too big

Ananda Marchildon won Holland's Next Top Model in 2008, but says she did not receive the prize she was entitled to.

A winner of Holland's Next Top Model is suing her agency for refusing to give her the prize money she claims she is due because they say she is "too fat".

Ananda Marchildon said she only received €10,000 (£8,300) of the €75,000 contract she was promised after winning the competition in 2008, aged 21. She was also stripped of her title
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The 1.83m (6ft) model claims she was sacked by Elite Model Management two years into the three-year agreement because her hip measurement exceeded their maximum limit of 90cm. The average European woman has 102.9cm hips. At the time of her dismissal, Marchildon claims her hips were 92cm.
Ananda Marchildon

Marchildon says her hips were 92cm (36in) when she was sacked. The European average is 102.9cm Her lawyers claim she lost rather than gained weight after winning the show. They argue the agency is obliged to work with Marchildon "as she looked in the final", rather than retrospectively forcing her to conform to their rules. The case has started a debate in the Netherlands about the extent to which young women are expected to adhere to near-impossible physical standards.

Dieuwke Levinson-Arps, who is representing Marchildon, claims her client was told by a lawyer working for Elite that she was sacked because "although she has a nice face, she has a fat arse" and that "she never had it in her to become a top model because she was unsuitable for catwalk work". She said Marchildon's physiology meant she had "no chance" of having 90cm hips, even with a strict diet and exercise regime. "Already she was very skinny, almost anorexically skinny," said Levinson-Arps.
In the two years after winning the show, Marchildon received around 20 assignments for Elite, mostly in print advertisements. She did not get any catwalk offers.

Marchildon is suing Elite for unfair dismissal. She wants them to pay out the remaining €65,000 she says she was promised for winning the show. Elite is contesting the claim.
Wikke Kootstra, a lawyer for Elite, said: "It was impossible for Elite to find [Marchildon] modelling jobs since she wasn't in the required shape."

Asked about the reason for a preferred hip measurement of 90cm, Kootstra said in an email: "Elite models model couture. Couture clothing is made in one size only: (très très) petite. This is not something modelling agencies can change. (I imagine they would welcome such a change since it would make their job so much easier … but it is not in their power to change what the market dictates.)

"Hip measurements are not the only criterium for the possibility to find suitable jobs for a model; they have to be in excellent trim and take extremely good care of their appearances, eat right, sleep well, exercise etc. It's not for everybody."

Kootstra said Elite never signed a contract with Marchildon. After winning the show she was given a contract with another modelling agency, MTA. She was then placed with the higher-profile Elite agency, said Kootstra, "as is customary in the modelling world, to obtain maximal exposure".

To support their case, Marchildon's legal team wrote to Tyra Banks, the American supermodel who owns the rights to the Next Top Model brand, saying the incident "exploits" and "grossly neglects" the character of Banks's original format. Banks does not appear to have received the letter as it was subsequently returned unopened.

Banks has been outspoken about her own weight fluctuations since tabloids ran an unflattering photograph of her in a bathing suit under headlines such as: "America's Next Top Waddle" and "Tyra Porkchop".

In March last year a beauty queen in Texas won a case against the pageant's organisers who stripped her of her crown after she allegedly put on weight.

A court judgment in Marchildon's case is expected on 7 March in Amsterdam.

A SUPERMODEL BIRTHDAY - KAROLINA KURKOVA CELEBRATES WITH A PAJAMAS PARTY

Karolina Kurkova celebrated her 28th birthday with a high-end fashionable pajama party in LA. The supermodel and her close pals, including Rachel Zoe and Montana Coady, got together for the relaxed celebration at a private residence after the Oscars. A source told us, “After all the Oscar parties, the dresses and the red carpets, Karolina wanted to do something relaxed and fun to celebrate her birthday. Rachel suggested a pajama party. It was a really lovely, cute event.” Statuesque Victoria’s Secret beauty Kurkova was ready for a quiet night in after gracing awards bashes including the Weinstein pre-party Saturday and Madonna and Guy Oseary’s post-show party.

BUCHANAN / SPLASH NEWS

Karolina Kurkova

MAJOR CHANGE AT WILHELMINA - SEAN PATTERSON RESIGNS

Wilhelmina Models president Sean Patterson has abruptly left the company on the eve of the Oscars. Sources said Patterson exited on Friday after disagreements between him and Mark E. Schwarz of New Century Equity, which acquired Wilhelmina in 2009. We’re told Patterson, who’d personally built the agency which boasts clients including Fergie, and Schwarz didn’t see eye-to-eye on how the company should be run. Patterson’s exit has sparked a string of resignations with staff in New York and LA who handed in resignations on Friday. “I own many shares in the company and wish the team of agents all of my gratitude and love. I am very excited for my next step,” Patterson said in an e-mail.

WIREIMAGE

Sean Patterson

Lack of diversity on Fashion Week 2012 runways is continuing trend

Fashionette Morrison (Photo: Wilhelmina Models)

New York's Fashion Week is one of the city's most noteworthy events. Now that this season's fall presentations have come to a close, industry watchers are examining an issue that rears its head every year: diversity on the runways.

Tracy Reese goes bold, bright, and colorful for New York Fashion Week

Each fashion week season, thousands of models walk the runways for prestigious designers, with white models making up the vast majority of those who work. In 2012, of the 4,561 individual looks that were seen during the shows, 20.1 percent were worn by women of color, according to Jezebel.com.

Black models represented 8 percent of this total, while Asian models fared slightly better with representation at 8.8 percent. Even though Latinos are the largest minority group in America, only 2.4 percent of the models used during 2012 Fall Fashion Week were Latinas.

African-Americans and Latinos make up 12.6 percent and 16.3 percent of the U.S. population respectively according to the 2010 Cenus, showing the extreme deficit in adequate representation for these groups on the runways. Asians, by contrast, make up 4.8 percent of Americans, and thus were over-represented.

Although these numbers represent a slight improvement over previous years, the most current statistics show that diversity during fashion week regarding models continues to be a difficult issue.

Lack of black designers at New York's Fashion Week draws experts' speculation

Though the lack of black models seems like an intractable issue, up-and-coming black model Fashionette Morrison told theGrio that she is actually positive about her future in the industry. Wilhelmina Models just signed her two weeks ago. One of her first runways shows was during the recent 2012 Fashion Week.

"I'm just so excited right now, and so proud of myself and everyone is proud of me too," Morrison said of her achievements. Originally from New Jersey, the budding catwalk worker said she has wanted to be a model since she was a little girl. Her name even predestined what would become her dream career.

African-American designer b michael: A profile in classic American style

"That's my real name," Fashionette said with a smile. "People are like, 'Your mother named you that?' And I'm like, 'Yes.'"

Morrison said her mother named her Fashionette, because her husband dressed her nicely during her pregnancy. In addition, Fashionette was to be the last child her mother would have -- making it an occasion for a very special name.

Could Fashionette Morrison be the next Chanel Iman, who is a current African-American modeling darling? Although both young women have names steeped in haute couture imagery, Morrison has many challenges to face if she wants to make it in an industry that often comes under fire for stereotyping and under-utilizing women of color.

Despite this, Fashionette told theGrio that her mom and friends continue to encourage her to go for a career in the fashion world -- and she hopes to inspire other African-American girls as well.

In a special report, CNN has confirmed that Fashionette's optimism is a growing trend. More black models around the world believe the industry is becoming open to their brand of beauty.

Sosheba Griffiths, a black, Jamaican model, told CNN that, "There has definitely been a big improvement since 2008 ... After the all-black edition of Vogue Italia, we have seen the numbers of black models go up on catwalks, magazine shoots, adverts, everything."

Yet in the same article, Essence magazine Editor-in-Chief Constance C.R. White stated, "there are still hurdles to overcome."

These hurdles won't deter Morrison from pursuing her modeling dream.

"For girls who want to go into this industry, I say just be strong and be positive," Morrison said. "Don't let anyone or anything get in your way. Just got for it."

The Modeling Industry - A change is needed!!

Skeletal models and super-sized hypocrisy: As fashion designers insist they've turned their backs on anorexic chic, do they think we're blind?

By LIZ JONES

Last updated at 12:26 PM on 23rd February 2011

Matchstick: Model Martyna Budna for Mark Fast shows off her worryingly thin frame, with jaunty shoulder bones and her ribs clearly visible

At a London Fashion Week where one designer, Maria Grachvogel, was forced to take in the seams on her samples because she couldn’t find any models who were a size ten, a ghost appeared on the catwalk.

It was as though I were looking in a mirror, at me aged 18, weighing 5st, about to be drip-fed on a ward in St Barts hospital.

I sat up straight on my narrow gilt chair. I looked around me to see if anyone else had seen what I had seen. But no, it was all sycophantic smiles, or that other thing fashion folk do, just the tops of expensively highlighted heads, tap, tapping away on their iPads.

I looked over at front row guest Samantha Cameron, but even she had failed to go pale. It is the drip, drip, drip effect, you see, when so many girls swim like matchsticks before your eyes, a death mask on the face of a teen becomes unremarkable.

I was at the collection for the autumn/winter shown by Erdem, the hot Brit designer of the moment. And this was the hottest model of the season: Chloe Memisevic, who was born in Sweden in 1993, and is represented by Wilhelmina Models in New York.

This is the very agency whose managing director had come along to a debate in New York a few seasons ago about the need for more realistic models, an event where Natalia Vodianova, the face of Calvin Klein, had broken down in tears when recounting how she had been told off for not losing her baby weight fast enough, and rejected by designers for being too fat.

The fashion world is going crazy for Chloe Memisevic — she was back on the catwalk yesterday for Mary Katrantzou looking horribly emaciated. As well as Erdem, she has walked the runway for Proenza Schouler and Marc Jacobs in New York, and Roksanda Ilincic and Twenty8Twelve here in London.

She is the face of Marc Jacobs. She is 5ft 11in and measures 32, 22, 34. On a Body Mass Index scale (a way of measuring body fat that proved too problematic to introduce at fashion shows, though it was mooted by Labour’s Model Health Inquiry back in 2008), she would hover somewhere below number 15.

A healthy BMI falls somewhere between 18.5 and 24.9. This means she is at risk of brittle bone disease later in life. And heart failure. And pneumonia. And an early, horrible death.

Just to give you an idea of how far fashion has stretched its new ideal of beauty, let me tell you about the Issa show on Saturday. Yasmin Le Bon walked the runway, and while in the Eighties she was seen as very skinny and flat-chested (her photo on the cover of the first issue of Elle prompted me to have a breast reduction), on the runway in among all these emaciated 16-year-olds she looked positively elephantine.

‘Oh God, that a***!’ said the male fashion director of a glossy weekly, sat right in front of me, clutching his man bag. This sums up our second biggest industry right now, the one that makes £20 billion a year for this country, the very one Samantha Cameron was so keen to big up (my God, if only she could!) in her heartfelt speech to launch the proceedings.

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Disenchanted by what I had seen at Erdem, I turned up at the Mark Fast show on Monday night, in the hope of a breath of normality.

A model on the catwalk shows off the Antonio Berardi Autumn Winter collection

Skin and bones: A model for Antonio Berardi's Autumn 2011 collection shows off her shockingly thin legs (left), while model Hannah Hardy's hip bones could grate parmesan', according to Liz Jones

After all, it was this knitwear designer who had caused such a storm a few seasons ago by using bigger girls on his catwalk, a decision that caused his stylist, a woman who is probably so starved herself she has started to consume her own organs, to storm out.

But while there were bigger girls on his runway, notably Gwyneth Harrison and Laura Catterall, who are both size 14, there were two of the thinnest girls I saw all week: Hannah Hardy, whose hip bones could grate parmesan; and Martyna Budna, who helpfully appeared in just a bra top, so we could break the boredom by counting her ribs.

Worrying signs: Chloe Memisevic is this season's hottest model, but she is doing her body huge damage by being so thin - including symptoms which could lead to an early death

On the Friday before London Fashion Week kicked off, I had gone along to a packed debate on this very topic held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. On the panel were Erin O’Connor, model and founder of All Walks Beyond The Catwalk, a campaign for diversity in fashion, Kiki Kendrick, a former advertising executive, Dr Linda Papadopoulos, a psychologist, Lynne Featherstone MP, Minister for Equalities, and Lorraine Candy, editor of Elle.

The most sense all evening was talked by Erin O’Connor, who described going backstage at a show, trying to get into a pair of trousers and finding she couldn’t get them on. This woman has the dimensions of a reed.

‘Make the trousers bigger!’ she yelled. ‘Make them bigger.’ We all cheered.

Kiki Kendrick, who came up with an award-winning self-esteem campaign for The Body Shop in 1997, featuring a size 16 cartoon doll called Ruby, explained that a woman is like an onion. If she has layers of love, family and self-esteem around her, the negative images in the media will not be able to penetrate. But if she does not have those protective layers, and so many of us don’t, then she is very vulnerable indeed to images telling her to buy stuff and to change herself.

And while I thought Featherstone, the Lib Dem MP who gained headlines by calling for an airbrushing code of conduct, was ill informed and naive when she thought anyone in Milan or Paris would listen to her, it was Lorraine Candy who made me see red. Asked about the airbrushing used by her magazine, she said: ‘My readers want amazing and beautiful . . . Are women so stupid to believe the image is real?’

Well, yes, I am sorry, we are. When I saw the airbrushed photos of Britney Spears released to promote her latest album, my brain told my body: ‘Hmmm, why do you have cellulite and she doesn’t?’ Only when the pop star released the unairbrushed photos (in the industry, these are called ‘raw’) did I realise the sleight of hand that had taken place. And if I — as a former glossy magazine editor — fall into this trap, of course other women will.

I’m sorry, Lorraine (a fellow columnist at the Mail), but you sounded like the Mubarak of the fashion world, unwilling to change due to fear — in your case of losing advertisers and therefore your job. You’ve just put Keira Knightley on your cover and even by this actress’s standards, she looks skeletal.

Unimpressed: Samantha Cameron grimaces as the stick thin Swedish model Chloe Memisevic shows off a new design during the Erdem show

After the debate, we were all invited to view an exhibition of photographs of women supposedly of all ages and shapes and sizes, taken by celebrity fashion photographer Rankin (like most male fashion photographers, it is quite acceptable for him to be short and overweight). It purported to be a celebration of ordinary women’s bodies, but it was nothing of the sort.

First, these supposedly realistic images were airbrushed to look lovely, but, second, what I cannot countenance is that the models chosen to depict plus size were a size 12! This is not plus size, this is

'She was so skinny you could count her ribs'

normal!

Just before London Fashion Week, I asked Carole White, the boss of Premier Model Management and one of the most influential agents in the world, why she thinks nothing has changed and why models on the catwalk are still so tiny.

I’ve campaigned on this issue since 1999, when I became editor of Marie Claire, and I told White my belief is this arrogant industry has merely been paying lip service.

As if to back up my point, in the new fly-on-the-wall TV documentary about her agency, which will air on Channel 4 tonight, one of White’s model bookers rejects an obviously beautiful young girl for having ‘big bones’.

Weighty issue: Chloe Memisevic barely filled out the floor-length gown as she walked the runway

White again passed the buck, saying she thinks it is down to the demands of the industry in New York, Paris and Milan. There, everyone has ignored the age limit of 16, using underage and underweight girls on shoots and in shows, champagne on tap backstage.

Every designer I spoke to this week, from Erdem to Christopher Kane, weakly protested they had changed.

Look at Daisy Lowe, they say. I met the 22-year-old model backstage at Vivienne Westwood, and she, too, would be considered tiny in any milieu other than this one.

I met Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, British Vogue cover star and ostensibly the leader of the new pack of curvy, sexy supermodels. She is minuscule!

Lara Stone, that other poster girl for curves, is just one inch bigger than her skinny rivals!

Crystal Renn, photographed so memorably in her voluptuous curves by Glamour magazine in September 2009, when her spare tyres (shock! horror!) provoked headlines, and who wrote a memoir about her recovery from anorexia and the fact she once weighed 6st 8lb, is rapidly returning to that fighting weight.

According to her agency calling card, she is now a U.S. size two, which is a British size six!

These girls have been used as a smokescreen, so that the gay men who run the industry can continue to peddle the idea that women should look like adolescent boys (it was no coincidence that nerdy, weedy boys walked the runway in womenswear this season). This is their dream, not ours.

Unrealistic expectations: The Mental Health Foundation believe using such thin models on the catwalk is irresponsible and dangerous

Why does what goes on in this elite bubble, this hall of mirrors, matter? Because even though Renn enjoyed fame as a plus-size model, the fact she is now a size six reveals that, deep down, women want to be tiny, no matter how much we protest.

It confirms the fact that once anorexia nervosa or even yoyo dieting has you in its grip, it is hard to ever be free of it.

Renn has explained her weight loss by saying she has ‘got into hiking’, but then anorexics and those with body image issues always say things like that. The week Chloe and Martyna and Hannah were allowed to tread the London catwalk was a sad one indeed. Sad for all those women out there who are easy prey to these overpaid idiots. Who will go on a diet, and fail, and binge. Who will worry about fitting into that bikini come summer. Who will look at these impossible, clearly harmful images and find they just don’t measure up, and never will.

I wish Erdem had come along on that Friday night and met one of the women in the audience, Nita Dickson. She is the mother of Sophie, who died in her 40s from anorexia-related illness. I had become friends with Sophie — who in the end weighed 3st — while working with her on a documentary. I remember sitting talking to her, in her South London terrace house, and gasping when two of her teeth clattered to the floor.

This is what these beautiful fashion shows don’t show you, the ugly side of being thin. Nita had come along to hear the debate, hopeful that a decade after her daughter’s death, something had changed. I watched her leave the building that night, shoulders stooped, impossibly sad and alone.

How many more mothers have to go through what Nita has gone through before someone, somewhere, says: ‘Enough!’