Fashion Week from an Untrained Eye: Shots of Models Eating

So, I’ve been trying to look at the news and the fashion news coverage of Fashion Week the same way I would regular news photography. Now, I realize how inverted that is because, while FW has its own rituals and dynamics, fashion and these shows very much mirror and riff off the culture. It’s all interesting though, whether a window than a mirror. One element that tapped me on the shoulder — seeing variations in both the NYTimes’ daily FW spread and one of the Reuters daily FW slideshows — was the scene of models eating. With all the focus and concern over anorexia and body image and thinness and super thinness, I’m taking these images as an editorial thing as well as an affirmative thing.

As a stolen moment, the Reuters shot here could be written off as incidental. That’s in contrast to the one leading the post of Hannah Caitriona, however, which is like an exclamation — which made me curious about the NYT caption. It reads:

Clad in white for Fashion Palette Australia, model Hannah Caitriona, bravely stuffs a sandwich into her mouth during a run-through just before the show.

Who knows what the sentence is referring to exactly. The adornment must remain pristine, yes? Yet, with those still prominent ideals about body image in the mix, the “bravely” is also interesting.

update 1: Interesting comment by bksbks below turning the commentary 180º — perhaps the imagery pays homage (or, simply “lip service”) to a larger domestic fashion trend: obesity.

update 2: removed reference to 9/11. Wasn’t the place.

(photo 1: Joe Kohen/Getty Images. photo 2: Carlo Allegri/Reuters. caption: A model eats before the Donna Karan Spring/Summer 2015 collection show during New York Fashion Week September 8, 2014.)