Ruth Leon recommends… Anorexia on The Catwalk – Schiaperelli 2025

​On The Catwalk

You may wonder why I would include a catwalk show on my online arts newsletter. I’m sort of wondering myself. It’s just that, having been born to a fashion family – everyone in the rag trade except me – I’m fascinated by what the great designers are showing and how they show them. And I’ve never been to Paris Fashion Week. I assumed they would put on a performance to showcase their imaginations. The models, I thought, would be the actors to make their vision accessible to the world.

I became mesmerised by the Schiaperelli catwalk show.

Like many little girls with a less than perfect figure, I fantasized about being a model. What would it feel like to march up that narrow carpet looking fabulous with everyone admiring you? If that fantasy hadn’t died with a single glance in the mirror, the reality of what is required would have finished it fast.

These current runway models are so thin, with legs so long you wonder how they support their bodies as they swing up and down on impossible heels with no expression whatsoever. It’s like watching dolls come to life with much less animation than, say, Coppelia, a ballet about dolls coming to life.

These models are not people, they’re not blood and guts humans, they’re unrecognisable as young women and, my opinion this, they are almost repulsive in their non-humanity. Which is presumably what the designers want their clothes to look like. But who would want to wear an outfit that only looks right on a piece of string?

Apparently, while I haven’t been paying attention, AI or something like it, has bred a race of proto-girls who have no visible personality, legs like pencils (measuring the same all the way down), and can be painted to present whatever is hung on them for the 30 seconds it takes to walk up and down the catwalk to irritating computer-generated non-music. But the serious question is what it takes to remain this thin in order to be able to work as a top-flight runway model. Even if self-imposed, it’s a form of abuse.

I watched this video for its full ten minutes with rapt attention and I can’t describe a single outfit worn by any one of them. The only fashion tip I picked up was that the models were wearing mis-matched earrings. I do that often in my more absent-minded moments. Only at the very end, when they all came out in a procession, did I realise that they were dozens of different girls, all looking alike.

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