Just take a look at the 11 photos of bone thin model Aymeline Valade, who’s featured in the retailer’s new Marni collection. I ask you – is she a healthy beauty image?
What are the decision-makers at H & M and Marni thinking? They have a fabulous new collaboration collection with Marni debuting at H&M stores, bringing high-style at affordable prices.
So why do they think it’s a good idea to photograph those clothes on a 5′ 10” model who looks like she weighs all of 90 lbs?
In the Marni H & M pics, French-born Aymeline Valade looks painfully thin with an oversized lollipop head that looks far too big for her scrawny body.
And if that’s not disturbing to enough, she’s also been styled with makeup that highlights her hollow cheeks and emphasizes dark unhealthy-looking circles under her eyes. It’s as if, H&M and Marni have deliberately set out to make her look even more unhealthy.
Some observers have even criticized the model for looking “corpse-like,” and “ready to collapse.”
Why oh why, does H&M , whose customers are primarily young women, want to present this disturbing and unhealthy-looking model as their Marni image to aspire to?
It’s perplexing and infuriating, when so many young women today suffer from eating disorders!
Now, what’s even more upsetting is that a video and photos of Aymeline Valade, who was born in 1991, that were taken just a year or so ago, show that she looked far healthier and prettier at the time.
This appears to be before she was also featured in ad campaigns for Lanvin, Alexander Wang, and in runway shows. We found these photo on her Facebook page.
She looks just as shockingly skinny and bone thin in those photos as she does in the H&M and Marni photos.
Why does the fashion world think this is attractive or aspirational?
In any case, H&M issued a statement to the Daily Mail website, mailonline.com, defending their campaign: “We appreciate feedback from our customers on how we conduct our business. We think it’s regrettable that some of our customers interpret Marni and H&M as unethical, and feel that the model is underweight. H&M has an advertising policy in which we strongly distance ourselves from alcohol and drug abuse, and we do not work with models who are significantly underweight.”
Hmm! You could have foolen us — if Aymeline Valade isn’t underweight, then any girl over 100 lbs is fat!
So HollywoodLifers, look through our gallery of 11 H&M Marni photos and then more photos of Aymeline Valade, plus the video below and tell us what YOU think?
– Bonnie Fuller
shanghai
Posted at 5:27 AM on March 12, 2012
Yes models have to be thin but I do wish they would not use the exceptionally skinny especially when modelling clothes that are aimed at the young and impressionable girls. Could be more acceptable in high fashion only.