Milan to ban skinny models?

This week the trade organization that oversees the seasonal runway shows in Milan announced that it plans to develop a nationwide campaign to fight anorexia. The goal is to keep emaciated and unhealthy-looking models off the catwalks and out of fashion advertising campaigns. How precisely the Camera della Moda plans to do that has yet to be determined.
Earlier this year, officials in Madrid banned from the runways models whose body mass index (a measure of body fat) fell below 18. That announcement barely caused fashion insiders to blink because Madrid is not one of the international centers of fashion. In fact, when Didier Grumbach, the man in charge of Paris's fashion week, was asked about the Madrid ban, he suggested that it was unwieldy, misguided and an inappropriate infringement on the creativity of designers. And in some respects he was right. It is not possible to legislate body weight.
But it is significant when Milan notices that some models look as though they have not eaten in months, because the Italian city -- along with Paris, London and New York -- helps set the global fashion agenda and ultimately the social definition of beauty. With design houses such as Giorgio Armani, Prada, Versace and Gucci based there, Milan has the kind of clout that Madrid lacks.
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