Turning away from the professional model in fashion photography

[Poisson Du Jour]

On the other hand in response to Brigitte, Karl Lagerfeld bluntly stated "nobody wants to see curvy women".
Then again, nobody wants to see haggard old dandies like Mr Karl...

Link to Lagerfeld statement

 

[Sirius Glass]

On the other hand in response to Brigitte, Karl Lagerfeld bluntly stated "nobody wants to see curvy women".

Curvy is a word used to describe one having to much Crisco in the can.

Steve

 

[Paul Jenkin]

I've often thought that the fashion industry would sell a lot more clothes,if the fashion models looked more like normal women and less like a good meal would kill them, so Miss or Mrs average could relate to them .

Benjiboy - you took the words right out of my mouth.

Designer labels feel they (a) want the clothes to hang the way they were designed and (b) give an aspirational "look" to the clothes. Nevertheless, most women are not stick-thin, tissue-paper eating, narcissistic chain-smokers who have cheek-bones like coat-hangers and resemble a zip if you stand them in profile and ask them to stick their tongue out. Thank goodness.

Apparently, the "average" size of a British woman is 14/16 which, on someone of 5'4" to 5'6" tends to look well-proportioned. The makes of "Dove" skincare products got in bang-on right, IMO when they set up their advertising campaign to include examples of women of most sizes, ages and skin colours.

Being inclusive rather than exclusive does tend to work best in a mass-market, though.

 

[removed account4]

It is not about fat women, but about women in which the average reader recognizes hereself in a physical way, but also about women who have a story whith them in contrast to the anonymous model. For this women from public life are going to be employed too.

i heard the interview the other day.
as you said, they want people that look real ...
people their reader-base can identify with...

i hope it works!

 

[Q.G.]

People don't want to buy things they do not need.
They do not need things that make them look like they already look.
They want things that make them look like they think they want to look.
You have to promise them that.
And when you do, the flock to the shops spending humongous amounts of money each week for stuff they think they need to become better.

Dove skin products is a bad example. What if their models aren't the slimmest of slimmest?
Now but where did you see a Dove skin care product model with a less than perfect skin?

 

[lns]

...

Dove skin products is a bad example. What if their models aren't the slimmest of slimmest?
Now but where did you see a Dove skin care product model with a less than perfect skin?

Well, without trying at all, here: http://www.dove.us/#/products/face/

That's a lovely woman of a certain age (I would guess in her 50s) with very prominent wrinkles. Very, very different from the botoxed and photoshopped images surrounding us elsewhere.

I think what Dove is trying to do with this campaign, very seriously, is to try to help girls and women improve their self-esteem by challenging, or presenting a counterpoint to, the unrealistic media images that are being presented elsewhere. Unrealistic to the point of being, in many cases, faked by severe digital manipulation of the photography. See, for example, this: http://www.stylelist.com/blog/2009/10/14/ralph-lauren-distorted-ad-skinny-model-fired-for-being-fat/

This is not a project on par with world peace, to be sure, but I don't think it's someting to be sneered at. And the German magazine likewise. Yes advertising and magazine photography is aspirational. But what some people are saying is, it's been taken too far and is creating an unhealthy culture. Kudos to them for trying.

-Laura