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"The man of the moment is an urchin, a wraith or an underfed runt."

By Ann Althouse

Fashion designers design for the ultra-skinny man. Fascinating pictures at the link of very thin male models.

[E]ven those inured to the new look were flabbergasted at the sheer quantity of guys who looked chicken-chested, hollow-cheeked and undernourished....

[M]odels like Stas Svetlichnyy of Russia typified the new norm. Mr. Svetlichnyy?s top weight, he said last week, is about 145 pounds. He is 6 feet tall with a 28-inch waist.

?Designers like the skinny guy,? [model agency director Dave Fothergill said.] ?It looks good in the clothes and that?s the main thing. That?s just the way it is now.?

It wasn't that long ago that male models were expected to be well-muscled. But somehow, as one designer put it: "The eye has changed." A well-built man can't fit into the clothes the designers want to make. He only fits in clothes that look "boxy," and boxy looks so wrong right now. So, the designers must design not only the clothes that look right, they must design the person inside the clothes.

Pity the poor fashion designer! It is not his business to make ordinary people ? have you seen these horrible ordinary people? ? happy and comfortable and reasonably good-looking in their clothes. He must realize a vision. Yet he is continually hitting up against the limits of human anatomy. He must put a human being inside his beautiful work, and these human beings are so hard to reshape into what looks new. It's not as if you can rip them apart at the seams and resew. So maddeningly frustrating.

Full post as published by Althouse on February 07, 2008 (boomark / email).