Congratulations to Filipina supermodel Anna Bayle on having her blog post on model eating habits featured in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Thelma Sioson San Juan writes:
Cosmetic surgery, beauty and treatments are a multibillion-peso industry.
That’s why I found interesting what New York-based Anna Bayle wrote recently in her blog (check out Annabayle.com). Anna, acknowledged by newspapers and magazines the world over as the first and only Asian supermodel and one of the world’s top 10 models in the ’80’s, has returned to the fashion scene. She has a well-read website, does reporting for Lookonline and is packaging her own TV show.She wrote, “Modelling is not a sickness, anorexia is.” She said that at her modeling peak, she was 110 lbs. (at 5 ft. 10), and worked to keep that weight because she had couture shows to do.
“Here’s that sexy number that every model will want to wear and there is nothing more unforgivable than you ripping the zipper accidentally when the women from the ateliers are dressing you. They have been working on the garment for 3 months and here you come, destroying their masterpiece.”
Besides, she said couture houses have a mannequin for each top model on which they fit the clothes, so she had to stick to her own mannequin’s measurements. She’d watch her weight so that one time, while fitting for Azzedine Alaia, she fainted just as Azzedine was putting pins on her.
But except for this, Anna said she and the other models ate a lot. They needed it to sustain the energy for the daily shows.
What I found interesting was how Anna described the catered meals in each couture house during fashion weeks.
“Models eat. Some of us could eat a lot,” she wrote.
She recalled weeks of fashion collections: “I would jump from tent to tent and check out what was good to eat. I remember Saturdays in Paris, one of the big days because you have such heavy hitters like Montana.
“Being Asian, even though I still had shows to do before Issey Miyake, I would always go to Issey’s tent where there was Western and Asian food because they had bento boxes for the dressers.”
After the shows, Anna recalled how their agents would pick up the models in SUVs and vans to cart them to a restaurant “where we’d be seated in a long table of 20 to 30 girls. We’d eat full meals — antipasti, pasta, main course, dessert, wine, after dinner drinks.”
Anna defined a beautiful model in a way only she could: “It is absolutely true that a long silhouette looks better for the clothes. It is true that when the clothes hang on a model, one can fully appreciate the elegant lines that the designer has created. It is true that the thinner you are, as a model, the better. However, sickly does not cut it; it becomes unattractive. I think models should understand that they are in the beauty business. Emaciated, skeletal, cadaverous. It does not make them beautiful. It is the elegance, the energy, their ‘projected’ well being that makes them beautiful.”
So take it from Anna Bayle. All the great models ate — from Jerry Hall to Cindy Crawford.
“After all, it is only fashion; it is not something to die for,” Anna Bayle said.
What’s especially remarkable is this: Anna’s blog is less than three months old. Good to see smart veterans re-enter the modeling scene the same way smart debutantes enter it: through the Web.
Good catch there by the Inquirer. Just this week, they featured a Filipina YouTube star. While most Philippine offline media outlets fear online media so much as to demonize it, the Inquirer has the confidence to cover it.
