I was cruising through some of my favorite fashion websites when I came across the bleak news that yet another model has taken their own life. This has cast a definite shadow over my day, and with mens fashion week in full spring news of another model's death is not a productive or positive step for the fashion industry. This time we say goodbye to Viveka Babajee an Indian model and actress. This is eerily close to Tom Nicon's death and again brings back memories of Dual Kim's tragic death and even the creative generous Alexander Mcqueen's suicide.
We could be predictable and reply with the popular notion that the fashion industry is fickle, cruel, unyielding, selfish, unfathomable and stressful. We could take this road or instead simply acknowledge that there are suicides, stress and cruelty in every industries and that there are people who abuse their job. I recall Abbey Lee Kershaw once being asked how she deals with body image issues in her industry, and she replied calmly; "You could say the same thing about body-builders, any elite performer is put under great pressure to be a certain thing...". I completely agree. Lack of comprehension of the happenings in the fashion industry is sadly often resulting in stereotyping, such as that of models; skinny, bitchy, sad, mentally and physically unfit naive young women.
There is a gradual yet undeniable movement in the fashion world to a more curvier model. This contradicts people assumption that everyone in the fashion industry is obsessed with stick figures. Crystal Renn (a plus sized model) recently walked for Chanel and according to models.com the top model in the world currently is Lara Stone, who cannot be described as underweight or eager to be so, she has boobs and womanly curves. As for the anger towards all models being bizarrely beautiful, and no 'normal' girls strutting their stuff and D&G (or similar) well wake up. Designers want people to buy their clothes because they look so beautiful on these models, if the clothes didn't look good on the model, people wouldn't spend this amount of money and countless fashion houses would close down, resulting in people loosing jobs. Models have always been gorgeous, thus they are models and thus they make us yearn for their beauty (and spend money to achieve it).
So we can conclude from this little rant that while there are undesirable aspects if the fashion industry it doesn't consume everything and isn't the source of all bad things that happen. We can also conclude that stereotyping may be cruelest element that can be imposed on models and other people in the fashion industry and that the fashion industry is moving towards a curvier future in terms of models (this doesn't do much for countering the stereotype of the fashion industry being fickle mind you). However the best thing that can be down currently is to morn yet another tragic death and pray for their family and loved ones. We can all work together to help those you need help and to try to understand things clearly, so we can prevent another saddening episode like this one from happening again.
