Too fat to model? Ulrikke Høyer in Paris last fall.
CREDIT: Getty Images
If you’ve always wished you could be a fashion model, you might change your mind after reading a new Facebook post by Danish fashion model Ulrikke Høyer. Høyer, who is 20, was dropped from a Louis Vuitton cruise fashion show last weekend. She claims the reason is that her size-4 body was considered too fat by the casting people for the show. Before being dropped, she says, her agent was warned that she had a “bloated” face and stomach, and the agent was instructed: “Ulrikke needs to drink only water for the next 24 hours.”
And then, even though Høyer says she ate the bare minimum for the following day, she was told she was dropped from the show and would be sent home. “I didn’t know whether I should cry or laugh,” she wrote, adding: “What should have been a truly amazing and unique experience ended up being a very humiliating experience.”
But Høyer decided she’d had enough. Not because her appearance was canceled, which is a relatively common occurrence in the modeling world, but because of the way she was treated. “I cannot accept the ‘normality’ in the behavior of people like this. They find pleasure in power over young girls and will go to the extreme to force an eating disorder on you.”
Her eloquent account (and the accompanying photos of Høyer in her underwear, captioned “Too fat for Louis Vuitton!” ) struck a nerve, and her Instagram and Facebook posts about being dropped from the show have been widely shared and prompted coverage by the Los Angeles Times and Teen Vogue (as well as death threats for the some Louis Vuitton execs). And so, what by some accounts was fairly routine treatment of a young female model has suddenly turned into a major PR headache for the company.
Only worried about jet lag?
Ashley Brokaw, Louis Vuitton’s casting director, says Høyer’s version of events is “a lot of misunderstanding.” In an interview with the fashion industry website BoF, Brokaw explained that despite a successful initial fitting in Paris, the coat the company had made for Høyer to model no longer fit correctly when she arrived for the show. Some other items they tried on her didn’t work either. “So it was a situation that was devastating all around.”
Brokaw also notes that despite being sent home, Høyer was paid in full. As for that instruction to drink only water for 24 hours, issued by Brokaw’s assistant Alexia Cheval, that too was misunderstood. Cheval didn’t mean Høyer should starve herself, Brokaw told BoF. She merely wanted her to drink water instead of coffee or soda in order to rehydrate and avoid jet lag.
Nice attempt at a save, but Brokaw’s version of events is a bit hard to credit. For one thing, BoF obtained the email Cheval sent to Høyer’s agent complaining about her pre-show fitting: “She has a belly, her face is more puffy and the back of her dress is open and you can see it is tight.” It doesn’t sound like jet lag was their biggest worry.
And then there’s the depressing fact that Høyer actually isn’t quite thin enough to meet “normal” fashion model standards. The UK-based Association of Model Agents specifies that female models should be at least 5’8 in height, with bust/waist/hip measurements of 34/24/34 inches. So at 36 inches, her hips actually were slightly larger than they were supposed to be–a deficiency of which she was well aware and which caused her to assume from the beginning that she might not qualify for the show.
In fact, she was relieved to be included at all. “I was working very hard to get my measurements back to ‘right,’ (it gets harder and harder each time, it is like my body is working against my hard work, doesn’t respond like it used to),” she writes in her Facebook post. If that isn’t enough to convince you that the body standards for models are bad for their health, she also notes that it’s common for models to stop having their periods or have their skin change color because of how they starve themselves.
Even so, directives such as those Høyer says she received from Louis Vuitton are commonplace for fashion models, according to others in the industry. Peter Damgaard, director of 2pm Model Management, which represents Høyer, told WWD that this sort of thing is “not a big surprise, especially with the high fashion clients. What’s new is a model saying stop.” He added that her decision to speak out means Høyer will no longer be a candidate for these sorts of modeling jobs. Then again, at 20 she may be close to washed up anyway. According to the Association of Model Agents, women must be between the ages of 16 and 21 for most fashion modeling work.
In recent years, some parts of the industry have started turning away from this you-can-never-be-too-thin ideal of female beauty, though. Sports Illustrated made headlines last year when it featured size-16 model Ashley Graham on the cover of its famed swimsuit issue.
And France, which is pretty much the epicenter of the thinness-as-beauty ideal, has addressed the situation with a new law requiring models to provide a doctor’s certificate that they are healthy before they can work.
Many of the other models Høyer encountered likely wouldn’t meet that requirement. Then again, it sounds like Louis Vuitton’s approach to its models is decidedly behind the times.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.