Editors Deny Self-Regulating Body To Be Established

Designer feathers have been ruffled in the editorial offices of UK style bibles by claims that self-regulation will result from Tessa Jowell’s “Body Image Summit”. A terse open letter has been released by the editors of some of the top fashion magazines denying that any such commitment had been made.

Yesterday press coverage of the summit, including Fash Mags To Ban Waifs Following Body Image Summit reported the comments of Marie Claire editor Liz Jones, who suggested that the industry could work together to prevent extremely thin women from appearing in fashion pages.

Some reports took this to mean that a policy of self-regulation had been agreed by the delegates. The letter released, which was not signed by Jones, said “As far as we are all aware there was no decision made to “set up a new self regulating body for the magazine industry”, to monitor the body sizes we represent, although the subject did come up for discussion.”

Among the signatures on the letter were those of Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, Lorraine Butler, editor of Cosmopolitan and Jo Elvin, editor of New Woman. All those who signed had attended the summit and claim in the letter that they already behave responsibly when dealing with models: “If any girl is seen by us to be sick in any way we have always informed the agencies.”

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