Vogue editors sign pact promoting ‘healthy body image’

The 19 international editors of Vogue magazine have signed a pact committing them to promoting a ‘healthy body image’in the magazine.

The Health Initiative is designed to ‘encourage a healthier approach to body image within the industry’and was unveiled today in the June issue of Vogue.

UK Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman said: “As one of the fashion industry’s most powerful voices, Vogue has a unique opportunity to engage with relevant issues where we feel we can make a difference.”

Shulman said the initiative would ‘build on the successful work that the Council of Fashion Designers of America with the support of American Vogue in the US and the British Fashion Council in the UK have already begun to encourage a healthier approach to body image within the industry”.

The magazine said: ‘In line with the Health Initiative, the international issues of Voguejointly pledge – among other things – to ‘work with models who, in our view, are healthy and help to promote a healthy body image’ and to ‘be ambassadors for the message of healthy body image’.”

CondÃ© Nast International chairman Jonathan Newhouse added: ‘Vogue believes that good health is beautiful. Vogue editors around the world want the magazines to reflect their commitment to the health of the models who appear on the pages and the wellbeing of their readers.”

In June 2009 it was revealed that the British edition of Vogue magazine had begun retouching photos of models to make them appear larger.

Shulman accused designers of making magazines hire super-skinny models for photoshoots by supplying them with sample clothes that were too small.
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