By LIZ JONES, Daily Mail

Last updated at 16:43 21 September 2006

There have been three moments over the past few days when I have felt ashamed to be part of the fashion industry.

The first came on Sunday evening, when Topshop kicked off London Fashion Week with a catwalk show in the idyllic setting of a marquee in Holland Park.

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The clothes were lovely, fresh, young,affordable, infinitely wearable. But what made me feel uncomfortable was the fact that, right bang in the front row, next to Arcadia boss Philip Green and his 15-year-old daughter, and looking like the cat who got the cream, was Kate Moss.

Rumour had it that she was about to sign a deal to design her own collection for the High Street store, and although Mr Green wouldn’t confirm or deny the rumour on Sunday, he phoned me yesterday to explain his decision to indeed sign a contract to work with Kate, despite her history of drug and alcohol abuse.

When I asked him if he really thought she was a good role model for Topshop’s mainly teenage customers, he said:-

"It is not a question of her being a good role model.

"Of course there are pluses and minuses to hiring Kate, and you have got to be concerned, and yes there is always a risk.

"But I am comfortable that it won’t happen again, and she knows what could happen if it does."

He said that part of the reason for Kate making an appearance in the front row on Sunday was to take the temperature of the fashion press, to see how well regarded she still is, and that the rapturous reception she received only confirmed he had ‘made the right choice’.

But my experience over the past few days, as I have been talking to editors and models, designers and agents, has been that these are the last people in the universe you would want as the arbiters of what is and isn’t acceptable to put in front of impressionable young women.

The two other seminal moments that prompted me to write this piece were at the Gharani Strok show on Monday, when a clearly dazed model fell onto the front row.

Then at the Jonathan Saunders show on Tuesday afternoon, a girl bringing up the rear on the catwalk (the slot to model the last garment in a show is always the most prestigious, by the way) caused the audience to gasp in shock.

Her back was so cadaverous, her arms and shoulders so eaten away (did you know that if you drop below a BMI of 12 you start to consume your own organs and muscle tissue?), that I decided to find out her name (Alyona).

Then I phoned her agency, Storm (who also represent Ms Moss), to find out if she was okay, and whether or not they were monitoring her closely enough, but, surprise surprise, nobody would take my call.

But what I found most infuriating of all, and which made me want to run onto the catwalk last night at Biba with a ‘Thin scum!’ banner, was how the fashion industry has closed ranks.

Virtually everyone I spoke to thought the whole issue of zero-size models on the catwalk was a great big yawn.

The consensus was that Madrid only introduced a ban on models with a Body Mass Index of less than 18 to put themselves on the fashion map. And that nothing, nothing will change, not this season, not next, and certainly not in Milan next week.

Shall I give you some examples of what people said to me this week, both on and off the record?

When I raised this horny subject in a car between shows with a male fashion stylist who works for a newspaper supplement, he said: "Who wants to shoot clothes on someone who is fat and ugly?"

I could have pointed out that we are not talking about putting someone fat and ugly on the catwalk, but dare I say it, just occasionally someone who is a size 12 (Beyonce Knowles is a beauty, but even she would not pass fashion muster).

And I could have pointed out that, yes, I know some models are naturally thin, but what about the rest of us who aren’t, but I didn’t bother.

You would think fashion stylists would be more circumspect on this subject around me, since I raised the whole body image issue back in 2000, when I was editor of Marie Claire, and have written about women’s relationship with their body image on these pages ever since, but I can only assume they can’t read. Ah well.

Almost every single person I spoke to in the business didn’t think there was a problem. Take Bella Freud, who designed the Biba show.

When I spoke to her backstage she said: "You need to back off. It is wrong to criticise models for their weight. It is rude and ungracious."

While I wouldn’t worry too much about Ms Freud’s influence over teenage girls while designing for Biba, a label which is prohibitively expensive, I would worry that she also designs for the cheap, cheerful and very young Miss Selfridge.

Talking to the models themselves also got me precisely nowhere. When I challenged statuesque model Erin O’Connor, the star of the new M&S campaigns, on the subject, she would only raise her eyebrows, as if this was the most tedious thing in the world.

"I think any type of eating disorder is unhealthy," she said, a statement which made me wonder if she passed any GCSEs at all.

"I don’t know my BMI, and I have no idea what I weigh," she told me as we walked into the Gareth Pugh show at British Fashion Week HQ. "I am just made like this."

She found it hard to think of a model with an eating disorder, and when I helpfully mentioned British redhead Karen Elson, who has talked about her struggle with anorexia, she merely thought that was a one off.

I know for a fact that Karen still struggles to keep her weight down, and yet this is an industry which I was repeatedly told does not have a problem.

I got the same ‘line’ time and again. This is Catherine Bailey, wife of David, outside the Jasper Conran show.

"I am sick and tired of this subject," she barked at me, eating a strawberry. "It is no worse now than when I was modelling. The reason the girls are thin is because they haven’t had a chance to develop yet."

This is Lily Cole, also backstage. She is the biggest model in the world at the moment, and I don’t mean this literally.

"Look," she said, backing away from me. "I don’t want to talk about this, I am afraid of saying the wrong thing. I feel persecuted, to be honest, and I will be quite glad to start at university and have some peace and quiet."

Lizzie Jagger, too, told me she had never dieted in her life. The fashion industry, you see, is desperately trying to shift the blame for the cult of the size 00 - a British size minus two, if you can imagine such a thing.

I have lived on fewer than 800 calories a day for the past 20 years, and even I can only get a size 0 as far as my knees.

A week or so ago, I interviewed Paige Adams-Geller, a former model who now designs her own range of jeans, and who happens to have a shop in Beverly Hills.

"If someone comes into my store and asks for a UK size 10, I flip cartwheels," she said.

"But most women in the business in LA are a zero, or if they are size 2 they are deeply ashamed.

"These women aspire to the models on the catwalk, they too want to wear those designer clothes on the red carpet."

I told her that I once tried to put Liv Tyler, who is curvy, yes, but gorgeous, on a magazine cover, but no fashion designer had clothes big enough to fit her.

Paige shook her head. "There is barely a celebrity who doesn’t buy into what the fashion world dictates. And they will do anything to become thin.

"I kept wondering why I would see an actress one week and she would look normal, and the next she would look gaunt, and I found out it is all down to crystal meth [which suppresses the appetite] the latest must-have accessory here in LA."

She also told me the name of the ‘celebrity stylist’ who is now suddenly so in demand, simply because she also acts as the stars’ drug dealer.

When I asked Paige whether in fact what everyone is telling me is true, that all the models are just naturally skinny, she gave a wry laugh.

"When I became a model at the age of 15 I was slim, I had won Miss California, for goodness’ sake, but the moment I signed with an agent I was told to lose the weight.

"There is no way that a girl over seven and a half stone will get cast on the catwalk. I used to eat one rice cake a day to stay that way. And this meant I never menstruated."

She told me she could guarantee that very few of the girls on the catwalk in London this week will have regular periods, which means they are storing up problems, such as osteoporosis, for later in life.

"I have seen first hand how these girls are treated," she said.

"I would turn up on a shoot and be offered a line of coke; I have even been on shoots where there have been syringes of heroin laid out ready for the models. I always said, no thanks, I prefer to starve myself."

No editor of any British glossy this week would go on the record and criticise the fashion industry, not even Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue, who when I challenged her on the issue last year had admitted that skinny models and celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker were not good role models for teenagers.

Having been a chubby teenager herself, she said she knew the damage these images can have (she always wanted to be thinner and blonder), but I understand she also had to be pragmatic.

If she were to put a scientist on the cover of her magazine, she told me, readers would abandon her in droves.

The only editor I could get to say anything remotely critical was Louise Chunn, the former editor of Instyle, and who now edits Good Housekeeping, which is thankfully not reliant on high fashion advertising.

Although she doesn’t think designers should adhere to some sort of code of good practice, she does think it ridiculous that women in their thirties and forties are only being shown clothes on 16-year-olds.

"I find it hard to find models for my magazine who are over 30 and still working," she says. "It is almost impossible to find a model who is a size 12.

"Let’s face it, being thin when you are over 40 is a lot of hard work, and it is a shame there is nothing on the catwalk or in magazines to reflect that."

Any designer who does want to cast a more ‘normal’ type of girl is going to find his or herself out in the cold in the current climate of the cult of the double zero.

This is one fashion editor’s take on the Basso & Brooke catwalk show on Tuesday night.

"They used older girls, bigger girls, and it just looked all wrong, somehow. We have now become so brainwashed into thinking that girls like the Australian 16-year-old Gemma Ward are the norm, that those girls on Tuesday night just looked frumpy and ancient."

How old were the poor old dears at this particular show? "Oooh, mid-20s?"

The only two fashion designers who would admit the industry has a problem were Paul Smith and Jasper Conran.

Paul Smith said: "What I think might happen after what Madrid has started, is that the (casting agencies), if they are clever, might start considering the idea of searching for girls that are a little bit bigger, maybe even just one size bigger. That would change things in the future.

"I would like the girls to be bigger. I would have used bigger girls for this show but you have to go with what the model agencies send you."

Yesterday, Jasper Conran, cast the decidedly thirtysomething and bootylicious Jasmine Guinness in his show, and when I congratulated him on taking such a bold step he said: "Listen, I love women. I design clothes for women, not stick insects.

"I was bullied at school for being fat and became anorexic myself as a result, and so I know what a terrible problem it is.

"And although I don’t think you can catch this disease from the pages of a glossy or by looking at catwalk pictures, I do think our industry has a problem, and I think it is largely down to the agencies [he says this last bit sotto voce].

"The model agencies need to take more care of the girls, think about their long-term futures, their well being.’

Earlier that day I had interviewed one of the hottest new young faces, Ani, a 15-year-old from Poland, and when I tried to ask her what she had had for breakfast, her agent from Premier told me my line of questioning was inappropriate, and told me to ‘step away’.

I spotted her in the Jasper Conran show, and so I asked him, was he aware that a 15-year-old was taking part in his show? "Really," he said, surprised. "No, I didn’t know that."

Back in 2000, at the government’s body summit, which called on everyone in fashion to address the prevalence of very thin and very young models, the then minister for women, Tessa Jowell, who was sitting next to me, passed me a carefully folded note, suggesting I take the floor and suggest setting up some sort of committee to monitor the industry, which I did.

The next day, every glossy editor, many of the leading model agencies and the head of the Association of British Model Agents faxed a letter to every national newspaper refusing to have anything to do with me or my committee.

After my experiences of the past few days, I am beginning to wonder whether the only thing that will make them sit and take notice is when a model actually drops down dead at their Jimmy Choo’d feet. But by then, it will be far too late.