Hi everyone,

London Fashion Week starts today and I wanted to give a little insight to this time of year for those of you who don’t know the inside of the fashion industry.

Catwalk models are the main group of models who are asked to stay incredibly thin. I was asked to lose an excessive amount of weight to become a catwalk model.

For starters, a model typically has to be a size 6 UK to even be considered for catwalk. That’s almost two sizes smaller than me. That’s half of the national average size in the UK. I was a size 8 when I was asked to lose weight. 

These models have to attend up to 10 castings a day, often running late in to the night, waiting for hours, and sometimes with no seats or even water provided. All just for a chance to meet a casting director. You’re never guaranteed work after all.

If you’re lucky enough to book some shows, you’re likely to be treated like a badly trained dog. You’ll be told to sit, stay, wait, come, sit, wait, go. You’ll have your hair pulled and overly heated to such extremes that you might cry, more than once. You’ll have dirty make up brushes used on your face. The same brushes used on the four girls before you. This can cause very bad eye infections and for your skin to break out in rashes. 

You’ll then be told to get changed. In the open. In front of all the other models, the hair stylists, the journalists and all the press photographers who have access to literally everywhere (the press photographers are sometimes just normal people who somehow got a press pass, can be almost anyone, even perverts).

Then it’s your time to shine, if you don’t faint from sleep deprivation or stress first. You’ll get about 30 seconds of catwalk time. Then it’s over. On to the next show, if you booked more than one.

This experience would be tough enough on a fully grown adult, let alone the 16 year olds being pressured to stay thin and work overtime. The Fashion Week circuit is a month long event, and models often travel from country to country to attend hundreds of castings, just to owe their agencies thousands for accommodation and flights at the end of it. They might not end up with anything to show from it besides a few photos of them on a catwalk, and that's if they were lucky enough to book any shows at all.