Free The Vogue Factor: The Inside Story of Fashion's Most Illustrious Magazine by Kirstie Clements Page B

fifteen-year-old brunette from Melbourne who had never flown before, and the other a sixteen-year-old from Germany. The Melbourne girl arrived, wide-eyed and terribly shy, practically clinging to me for the whole shoot. The other girl was a gum-snapping, chain-smoking sexpot, who arrived with her fifty-year-old boyfriend. I don’t recall either of the shoots being terribly successful.
    Over time, readers did become more critical of models who looked too young and too thin, perhaps in direct correlation to how much the industry was using them. When you receive a well-written letter from a polite and astute reader asking why you are choosing children to promote fashion for women, it is difficult to respond with any level of intelligence. It is a legitimate question.
    In 2005 I was on a location trip to Morocco with my fashion editor Naomi, waiting for a model—a new face predicted to have a big future—to arrive from Paris. Her plane had been delayed and as she was not going to make it to the hotel until very late, we went to bed. When we went to the model’s room the next morning, we found her in bed sleepy-faced and clutching a large teddy bear. She looked about twelve years old. I was horrified.
    Under my editorship the fashion office found a new favorite model—Katie Braatvedt, a fifteen-year-old from New Zealand. Katie wouldtravel to Sydney for shoots, always accompanied by her mother, who was a priest. On one shoot, I sat and chatted with her mother, while she wrote next Sunday’s sermon.
    Katie was indeed gorgeous and we had her under contract: the idea being that
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grooms and protects the girls at the beginning of their careers. But in April 2007 I ran a cover of Katie wearing an Alex Perry gown and standing in a treehouse, and received a storm of protest, from readers and the media, accusing us of sexualizing children. I lamely debated the point that this was not the message we intended, and that the photographs were meant to be innocent and enchanting, until I decided to give up. I was being led by what the fashion office wanted, not what the reader wanted.
    This is a constant tension when you are an editor. In the end I had to agree wholeheartedly with the readers. How had
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’s viewpoint become so narrow that we had to fly in a fifteen-year-old from New Zealand every time we shot? Was there not a broader range of beauty that we could celebrate? I felt foolish even trying to justify it. What do you say: “Oh, but she’s pretty”?
    I immediately instigated a policy that we would not employ models under the age of sixteen. If a girl under sixteen was discovered who had potential, we kept an eye on her and had her agency update us with new photos every six months or so. I don’t think it would be a bad idea to push the age limit up to eighteen. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds tend to be naturally slim, but at eighteen or nineteen years bodies begin to mature and change. Would it not be preferable to start a career with a slightly more womanly body, rather than fall into the trap of starving yourself back to your sixteen-year-old shape?
    Sales remained steady on the magazine, so clearly my decision to ban girls under the age of sixteen had no negative repercussions.
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internationally has since launched a project in June 2012 called the Health Initiative, instigated by US
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editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, which bans the use of models under sixteen and pledges that they will not use models they know to be suffering from eating disorders. The first part you can police. The second is disingenuous nonsense, because unless you are monitoring their diet 24/7, you just can’t be sure.
    In 2011, I was sent an email from a US agency informing me that “plus-size” model Robyn Lawley was returning to Australia and that
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might be interested in seeing her. When I opened the attachment I discovered Robyn was drop-dead gorgeous, with a beautiful face and great legs. “Plus-size” meant she was about a