Rise Of The Real People

The thin and beautiful have had their turn. The hippest models today look more like the rest of us.

Fashion-industry folks say the trend of using real people to sell clothes attests to a fatigue with skinny, expressionless models in ads and on runways. As proof, they point to the negative publicity surrounding the painfully thin models at last spring's Fashion Week. "I definitely think there's some backlash amongst people who see fashion shows, then read stories about how the models have to smoke themselves to death and only drink lemon water for six weeks," says Simon Rogers, head of Ugly New York, a casting agency for "real"-looking models. "People would like to see somebody up there who reflects how people on the street really look." (The TV show "Ugly Betty" echoed this sentiment in a recent episode where Betty staged an "alternative" fashion show with nonprofessional models.)

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Much of this interest in real-looking models is driven by the Internet, which has democratized the once rarefied world of high fashion

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Clothing companies are responding to the trend by seeking real people who look at home in the clothes being sold.

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While Ben Sherman won't be showing at fashion week, Dana Dynamite, VP of marketing, says the brand is enthusiastic about using real models on catwalks in the future. Response to the ads, she says, has made her a believer: "People on blogs are saying we're so much cooler now that we did this."

It's about time!!
Read the entire piece by Jennie Yabroff from Newsweek .