Allegra Hicks

Fashion Design Assistant

           Reavley House

Grosvenor Square

London

WIS IKT

Stephen Quinn

Publishing Director

The Condé Nast Publications Ltd,

Vogue House

Hanover Square

London

WIS IJU

November 20th, 2007                                                                                          

Dear Mr Quinn,

   The media have whipped the issue of Size Zero (UK Size Four) into a frenzy it doesn’t deserve. Nearly every magazine devotes one or two covers a month, to the journalistic equivalent of running around like a headless chicken screaming “SIZE ZERO! SIZE ZERO!” I for one got tired of it months ago. So why am I writing? Hopefully so you will read my letter and think a little more rationally about this issue.

   

Firstly, size zero is nothing new. In fact, a modern UK size four is actually larger than a UK size six was in the 1960’s. As the average woman has grown larger, designers have increased the size of their clothes accordingly to massage their customers/clients egos – the majority of women would prefer to be told they’re a size ten instead of a size twelve, and so on. This has created a need for smaller sizes to fit customers who are bucking the trend and staying thin. The smallest available size (in both UK and US) used to be a size six; now a six is much larger, designers have to utilise numbers four, two, zero and beyond. It’s not as if an army of extremely thin women suddenly materialised out of nowhere.

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Secondly, the link between size zero and a Body Mass Index (BMI) of eighteen is misleading, as indeed the label “Size zero model” when most runway models, being five feet ten inches (5ft10ins) or taller, simply do not have skeletons small enough to fit into size zero clothes. Yes, models are very thin, but I have yet to see a runway model that is a genuine size zero. The suggestion that all women with a BMI less than eighteen are size zero, which is that campaigners for the BMI restriction laws claim, is completely false. My own BMI is ...

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