Vanesa Lopez looked at the mannequin in the store window and burst out laughing. It was mostly leg, impossibly long and thin, with shorts hugging a tiny waist and a frilly top on delicate shoulders.
"That's out of my league," said Ms. Lopez, a 30-year-old interior decorator with a medium build.
Such skeletal fashion dummies are now doomed in Spain under a groundbreaking accord between the Health Ministry and major retailers such as Zara and Mango.
Also targeted for extinction is the dilemma of a size fitting just right in one store but being too tight at another -- just one more way to make a woman feel fat.
The program is aimed at changing the perception that super-skinny women are fashionable -- an image some believe contributes to eating disorders.
Madrid and Milan banned ultra-thin models from their fashion week runways late last year, and this year the Council of Fashion Designers of America announced guidelines designed to help models eat and live more healthfully.
Two major changes, announced in January, are in the works in Spain: Stores run by four big names will start replacing window display mannequins so that none is smaller than size 38 (size 6 in the U.S.). And designers will standardize women's apparel so a given size will fit the same way no matter who sells it.
To get a better idea of the shapes of Spanish women's bodies, the government is using laser-fitted booths that can take 130 measurements of a body in 30 seconds.
The program will study 8,500 women ages 12 to 70 and pass the data on to clothing designers. The manufacturers' garments will then reflect the dimensions of real women, not catwalk waifs.
Source: The Augusta Chronicle. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. Powered by Yellowbrix.
