Opinion

What is beauty?

By Juliet Hindell

I have recently been covering the Tokyo autumn/winter fashion collections. It has meant I have come face-to-face with the glamorous world of high fashion and I have found myself thinking about what constitutes beauty both here and in other countries.

Although Tokyo's fashion shows may not generate the excitement and column inches that are the stuff of the seasons in Paris and Milan, Japanese designers have immense influence on trendy dressers around the world. Maybe that is why, in many of the fashion shows I have seen, European models dominate the catwalks. Some younger, trendier designers stick exclusively to Japanese models but in what might be called the "high fashion" bracket, designers seem to use more foreigners.

Why is this so? This is Japan after all and most of the clothes on show will be worn in Japan by Japanese people — shouldn't the models be Japanese? But just take a look around and you will see that images of western women are used not only in fashion shows but in magazines and advertising.

One Japanese modelling agent told me he thought the Japanese have an inferiority complex, they prefer to use western models because they are taller, blond, have double-fold eyelids and are "more exotic."

He said the situation was partially mirrored overseas. There Japanese models are sometimes used in fashion shows to be exotic. But he said far fewer make it big than the number of western models in Japan. The Japanese models who are successful overseas are also often not successful in Japan because they are "too oriental-looking," meaning they have single-fold eyelids.

This kind of discussion can veer dangerously close to racism but it's clear that what passes for beautiful is very different, depending on where you are. For instance in Japan, it can be thought cute to have ears that stick out or crooked teeth, although neither attribute would be praised where I come from.

Tastes in beauty come and go, it was not that long ago that fashionable women in Japan painted their teeth black or that European women deliberately hosted tape worms to keep themselves ultra-thin. In the 1980s, models had to conform to a very particular look, square cheekbones were de rigueur. Now agents say they look for individuality.

There are some practical barriers to some would-be Japanese models. Designers say they are just not tall enough to show off the clothes in the best light. But hang on a minute, the people who buy the clothes are probably not going to be giants, shouldn't the designers be making clothes for their real customers rather than some non-existent ideal of women?

Recently in London, some designers have deliberately chosen models for their fashion shows who are not stick thin, who are not 19 years old and who look like real people. Such moves should be welcomed, but it's unrealistic to expect that this will become the norm. Designers, like everyone else, want to show off beautiful clothes on beautiful people — it gives us all something to dream about. But remember, beauty, wherever you are and whatever you look like, is only skin deep.

Shukan ST: April 27, 2001

(C) All rights reserved