Twenty-five years later, thin is still in with the fashion industry.
That is the takeaway from new research that studied a quarter-century worth of runway images, advertising, magazine covers, and editorial spreads. Mining nearly 800,000 images, a team of five researchers in Europe and the U.S. determined that ultra-lean physiques remain the beauty ideal. That was particularly evident at the high-end of fashion with thinness being “over represented” at the top-tier, according to the “Cultural Evolution of Human Beauty Standards” study.
There were also signals of advancement in diversity, but that was driven in some cases by the inclusion of plus-size models. Non-white models were 4.5 times more likely to be plus-size, which led researchers to speculate that “the industry consolidates multiple markers of diversity onto already underrepresented individuals rather than broadening inclusivity structurally.
The team examined images of approximately 15,000 models via Models.com and The Fashion Model Directory over 18 months, according to one of the researchers, Louie Bodier. Artificial intelligence was only used as a research tool on a limited basis, partially due to FairFace’s flaws in favoring Caucasian people, he said.
