For Rosie R&P Long

OK, Rosie,
I hereby renounce my dream of being a supermodel!!


An illusive beauty
Is fake better? Technology and illusion take over from nature as
fashion pushes the boundaries of perfection
Mar.*20, 2006. 06:43*AM
DAVID GRAHAM
FASHION WRITER

Reality doesn't cut it any more.

In a world obsessed with phenomenal good looks, where even the
minuscule flaws of 15-year-old supermodels are airbrushed or
computer-enhanced to perfection, the fashion world is breaching the
limits of mere human beauty.

We should have seen it coming.

The unrelenting quest for beauty has narrowed the high-end modelling
field to a few dozen very young teens deemed worthy enough to walk on
runways and grace the covers of magazines ‹ a handful from Russia, some
from South America, a smattering of Canadians and one Australian.

Even then, their stunning appearance is augmented by skilled makeup
artists. And in the end, these girls acknowledge their careers will be,
in all likelihood, very brief.

Now, apparently, even their exceptional beauty is not enough.
Advertising executives and fashion magazine art directors
electronically doctor the images of these remarkable physical specimens
to take them beyond perfection.

Witness the current Lanvin advertising campaign in which the eyes of a
ravishingly pretty young woman apparently have been altered digitally
to proportions more suited to an extraterrestrial or a Japanese anime
character.

The model's face is unlined and she reveals no expression ‹ nothing new
here. It's her otherworldly eyes that render the image disturbing.
While women have always aspired to make their eyes appear larger, these
limpid pools are oceanic.

This arresting photo illustration steps well outside the boundaries of
human beauty, potentially creating an ideal that even the most
adventurous plastic surgeon could not achieve.

Mere human genetics are falling down on the job.

Suzanne Timmins, fashion director of HBC, insists such artificially
amplified beauty heralds the future. "It's the start of a whole new
look in advertising," she says of the Lanvin campaign, which the Paris
fashion house admits is inspired by manga comics.

Timmins describes the Lanvin model as "amorphous" and "a kind of
21st-century Stepford-doll amoeba." Fashion advertisers are going too
far, she believes. "It's not good enough to simply remove the lines
from a 20-year-old's face. Now we are being asked to emulate aliens."

She says the Lanvin ad that eradicates all signs of real life is in
sharp contrast to the intentions of Dove soap's current Campaign for
Real Beauty, which uses women of all shapes, sizes and ages instead of
professional models and encourages us to find the beauty in
imperfection. "Not many advertisers have followed their lead," says
Timmins.

For his recent fashion show in Paris, controversial British designer
Alexander McQueen teased guests by issuing invitations hinting
supermodel Kate Moss would appear on his runway. It was a titillating
suggestion because Moss was dumped by fashion house Burberry and the
department store chain H&M last year in the wake of a cocaine scandal.

McQueen's show had ostensibly ended with no sign of Moss when a tiny
puff of white smoke formed inside a giant glass pyramid situated in the
middle of the runway.

The cloud swirled into a life-size, three-dimensional hologram of Moss.
Suspended in mid-air, the apparition began dancing dreamily in cascades
of ruffled chiffon. Then, just as it had appeared, the ghostly image
began to evaporate, dwindling to a flicker of light that eventually
vanished.

The usually reserved fashion audience leapt to their feet to applaud
the cinematic trickery, the technology and the emotional impact of one
friend (McQueen) paying tribute to another (Moss).

The production values associated with employing an apparition of Moss
instead of the real thing sparked a host of possibilities.

Is fake better?

Dave Lackie, the editor of Cosmetics magazine, acknowledges the fashion
and beauty industries are constructed on the pursuit of unachievable
fantasies. Women have always been intrigued by the ideals presented in
fashion magazines. They buy cosmetics to plump lips and widen eyes,
corsets to narrow waistlines and high-heeled shoes to lengthen legs.
They've even signed up for surgical procedures that promise to
transform plain Janes into cover girls.

Now that perfection is more attainable than ever, fashion marketers are
pushing the envelope by conjuring a vision of computer-generated female
beauty that simply doesn't exist.

Once people can achieve the look, the fantasy loses its appeal, argues
Timmins, hence the need to constantly up the ante and keep the illusion
out of reach.

Lackie agrees. "There was a day when models actually reflected the
customers of the fashion houses. Now they are modelled on teenagers who
couldn't possibly afford the clothes or bags. Now we're at a point
where any kind of a flaw is wrong and has to be corrected."

Though Timmins is unsettled by these efforts to "corrupt the human
form" and laments this is the wave of the future, others are convinced
a backlash is imminent. Perhaps it is already taking place. As beauty's
pendulum swings toward this heightened, unachievable vision, they claim
that "unconventional beauty" might be the next big thing.

It's happened before.

In the 1980s, model Kristen McMenamy burned up the runways even though
she was commonly and harshly called an ugly duckling and "the freakish
mascot of would-be avant garde designers."

Now Montreal's Irina Lazareanu has taken up the torch. Like McMenamy,
Lazareanu has, to put it kindly, an approachable beauty.

"We're going to get back to the old days when models were real people,"
says the model's Montreal agent, Alan Thomas. "We're going to want to
see them as interesting people like Irina," a model whose interest in
dance and songwriting has been well-documented.

"People are liking the idea of Kate Moss because she's older now. She's
made good and bad decisions in her life."

And you can see it on her face.

--
Diva
*****
The Best Man For The Job Is A Woman