Brigitte Bans Bony Models

Posted By elissa on Jan 15, 2010 | 2 comments

Germany’s most popular fashion magazine, Brigitte, began its new policy last week: no more professional models.

Normally she teaches history at a Hamburg grammar school, but elaborately made up to look like Marlene Dietrich and wearing a €480 (£425) silk dress, Sybille Zschaber was yesterday all over the fashion pages of Germany’s most popular women’s magazine as it began its ban on professional models.

 The 29-year-old blonde teacher was among a cast of more than six “normal women” selected by the mass circulation middle-market Brigitte to pose for its January fashion feature following an editorial pledge by the magazine to keep controversial size-zero models off its pages.

Andreas Lebert, editor of the 700,000-circulation magazine, announced the ban last October after receiving letters from hundreds of women readers who complained that they had no connection with the models shown in the magazine and that they no longer wanted to see “protruding bones”.

 He claimed that the models Brigitte used for years on its fashion pages were so skinny that editors had to “fatten them up” using Photoshop… 

Smart move.  The emphasis should be on lean and healthy – not unhealthy skin-and-bones.