Karl Lagerfeld, the eccentric German fashion tsar, has waded into the debate about size-zero models by saying that people want to look at "skinny models" and classing those who complain as "fat mummies".
Lagerfeld, 71, was reacting to the magazine Brigitte's announcement recently that it will in future use "ordinary, realistic" women rather than professional models in its photo shoots. He said the decision by Germany's most popular women's magazine was "absurd" and driven by overweight women who did not like to be reminded of their weight issues.
"These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly," said Lagerfeld in an interview with the magazine Focus. The designer, who lost a lot of weight himself several years ago, added that the world of fashion was all to do "with dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women".
At a time when the fashion world is starting to hit back at the claims that it encourages anorexia, the Hamburg fashion designer John Ribbe, a regular participant in the Paris fashion show, said the row over underweight models had become hysterical. "It's just as much a cliché as saying that all models take drugs and get drunk at sex orgies," he said.
"Ninety per cent of them are quite normal, properly proportioned girls with less fat and more muscles, who also eat pizzas and burgers."
Brigitte's editor, Andreas Lebert, said that after years of having to "fatten up" pictures of underweight models with Photoshop, the magazine would produce its first edition with non-professional models on January 2.
The decision follows a recent appeal by British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman to major fashion houses to end the "size-zero" culture, and a scandal over a Ralph Lauren advertising campaign in which a model had been thinned down using computer graphics.
