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Model Roos Abels at the age of 14 on the catwalk
While their peers are still at school, they are already running down the catwalk. Here's why designer Miuccia Prada casts teenie models despite the CFDA agreement to protect young girls.
At a fashion show, there is often a very special atmosphere: tingling, glittering, flashes of lightning. At the Fashion Weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris, hundreds of pretty girls presented the new collections of well-known designers. But it is not just the time of the year when we see fashion trends, but also the one in which countless girls admire the photos of the shows in magazines and think: I want to be a model, too! And indeed, just after the fashion weeks, the run on the agencies to.
But what many applicants do not know: Away from the limelight, the job is tough. The pressure is immense, the competition is huge. In Germany alone, more than 2, 500 girls are under contract, in Paris there are even 4, 000. Only those who are willing to put everything else behind can keep up. Not infrequently, models have a body measurement index below 16, a clear sign of underweight.
Many designers even book children and teenagers for their labels because they have little curves and look fresh. In order to tackle this, the designer Diane von Furstenberg, for example, has been calling on the CFDA ("Council of Fashion Designers of America") since 2007 that models under the age of 16 are not allowed on the runway.
Today, 7 years later, Miuccia Prada whistles on the agreement and sends Model Roos Abels on the runway of their spring / summer show for 2015. Season after season, designers ignore the CFDA requirement and make exceptions in the casting . Of course, the Italian fashion icon helped many models in the past few years to make a big breakthrough. Whether Ondria Hardin, Kelly Mittendorf, Antonia Wesseloh or Lindsey Wixson, they all owe Prada their career jump. And all of them were first promoted by the fashion house at the age of 14 to 16, before being released into the model business shark tank.
Our verdict: We do not need little girls to show us the latest trends and hope that more designers will be inspired to rethink in the future. Nevertheless, we wish newcomer Roos Abel, but of course, all the best!
