Catwalk stars face random drug tests

[Lunar Loops]

This from The Sunday Times (UK):

Catwalk stars face random drug tests

Maurice Chittenden


MODELS face random drug tests before they are allowed on the catwalk in a crackdown on abuse in the British fashion industry. Those who fail could face fines and bans from shows.
Girls under 16 will also be prevented from taking part in the twice-yearly London Fashion Week, the latest of which starts next weekend.
Model agencies may have to prove that they are arranging medical checks, including screening for eating disorders, before being granted a licence. These are among the recommendations of a six-month inquiry for the British Fashion Council into the health and safety of the industry.
It was set up following the death of three “size zero” models in South America. All had eating disorders and were so thin that they had a body mass index (BMI) below 14.5, which the World Health Organisation rates as beyond starvation. One had survived for the last three months of her life on lettuce leaves and Diet Coke.
The debate over size zero models - equivalent to size four in Britain - has led to seriously underweight models being banned from catwalks in Madrid and girls in Milan being asked to carry a health certificate.
There will be no recommendation for an outright ban on girls with a low BMI in the report to be unveiled on Friday. It has been written by Baroness Kingsmill and her panel, which includes Erin O’Connor, the model, and Giles Deacon and Betty Jackson, the designers.
The inquiry team believes boxing-type weigh-ins for models would be demeaning. Instead it wants a mentoring scheme under which older models would look after new recruits. It also proposes setting up workshops where designers and agents can identify and advise models with eating disorders.
Another plan is for a union or trade association to help to protect models from being exploited by agents or sexually harassed by fashion photographers.
O’Connor, 33, said last week: “The union idea is something that has been in my mind for some time. We are exploring a lot of different options.”
She has written an article for this week’s Style magazine in which she says it is important to prevent impressionable youngsters viewing the slight, adolescent figures they see on the catwalk as role models.
Some model agencies accuse the panel of a “kneejerk reaction” to the deaths in South America and meddling in a £2 billion industry that employs 10,000 people. They doubt that random drug tests would work.
There are also fears that a ban on under16s would hamper the discovery of stars. The super-models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell were spotted by scouts before they were 16. Georgia Frost, who was 17 in July, was first approached when she was 13 and again when a scout saw her at the Clothes Show Live exhibition at the age of 15.
Photographs of Moss allegedly taking cocaine with Pete Doherty, her on-off pop star boyfriend, have crystallised fears about the use of drugs in the fashion industry. An inquiry insider said: “There is no reason random drug tests wouldn’t work. But . . . we are suggesting it to help the girls, not to be a heavy-handed police officer.”
Kingsmill, whose first job was as a press officer in the fashion industry, refused to comment before publication of her report. But Laurie Kuhrt, chairman of the Association of Model Agents, said: “I think it would be very difficult to enforce random drug tests. As for a models’ union, that is quite unnecessary. What these people don’t realise is that agents look after models as if they were their mum and dad.”
He said his association had first suggested a voluntary ban on girls under 16 at London Fashion Week, but agents should still be allowed to encourage budding models to get portfolios of photographs together during their school holidays.
Kuhrt, whose FM agency will provide models for the fashion week, added: “There has been a relentless campaign to vilify models and accuse them of being anorexic. What people need to realise is that some of God’s children are born very tall and very thin. They are scouted for throughout the world. It is not as if we get people together and starve them to death.”