Rejected: Willowy 17-year-old Madeline Jones
Last weekend it looked as though London Fashion Week might finally be waking up to what real women want when designer Mark Fast sent plus-size models down the runway.
Had the fashion world learnt its lesson - that most of us cannot identify with hollow-cheeked, twiglet-legged, coat hanger models? Had it hell.
How do I know? Because our family has first-hand experience of the fashion world"s dogged obsession with "thin" - not slim, not healthy but the sort of bone protruding skinniness that makes people turn around and do a second take.
It should have been a highlight of our 17-year-old daughter Madeline"s young life.
Amid choruses of car horns and wolf whistles from passers-by, this stunning 6ft tall schoolgirl, a whisker under 9st, went bouncing into her modelling agency, Profile in Covent Garden, buzzing at the prospect of the string of castings she was due to attend for her first London Fashion Week, with several of the agency"s other teenage new faces.
The girls, all tall, leggy and faun-like, slipped on their high platform shoes and body-hugging mini-dresses (regulation wear for castings) and began a catwalk training session, coached by two experienced Profile models and Madeline"s cheerful, motherly model booker Sam Cookson.
Madeline was on a high after a shoot at the weekend in London with a cuttingedge Welsh photographer, Grant Thomas, and influential stylist Debbie Lerner. The eye-popping images had been posted on his website and brought more offers of work, boosting our once painfully shy teenager"s confidence.
So, as she strutted down the Profile catwalk, hips forward, shoulders back, listening intently as she was taught to hold the pose on the turn, Madeline looked to my untutored eye to be a natural.
She was rangy and graceful after years of netball training, with endless legs and a hint of haughtiness (which was actually a slight frown of concentration).
Next moment, however, an anxious-looking Sam beckoned her into a side room. Out of sight of the other girls, she talked quietly, a consoling arm round Madeline"s slight shoulders. Her face fell. I could tell she was trying desperately not to cry and I knew something was wrong.
Sally Jones with her daughter Madeline. Sally is incredulous that London Fashion Week deemed Madeline too overweight to model for them
"It"s no good," Sam was saying. "There"s absolutely no point in you doing London Fashion Week. You"re gorgeous, you"ve got the "wow" factor and photographers love you, but you"ve put on weight since the summer.
"It"s quite natural - most 16 and 17-year-olds" weight fluctuates because of hormonal changes - but if you"re an inch over size 8, you"ll be torn to shreds. Those queeny designers and their scouts would make your life hell and it could destroy your confidence."
Seeing my crest-fallen daughter, another model stepped in to try to comfort her. "The fashion world is awful," she said. "They all demand size zero models - what they really want is surrogate boys. It"s not just the camp male designers. Some of the women are just as hard.
"However young a girl is, they don"t just say "Thanks but no thanks" if they don"t want to use you. They"re incredibly insulting and personal and can make even very promising models feel utterly worthless."
Madeline was devastated when she heard the verdict on her weight from the fashion industry
Madeline fat? This had to be a joke. But for her sake I smiled through clenched teeth and said brightly that it was probably for the best. I tried to be calm, hiding how shocked and incredulous I felt and how gutted that our bright, high-achieving girl had suffered this devastating blow to her confidence.
Only I knew just how much courage it took for Madeline to force a wonky smile and shout encouragingly "Good luck!" as her fellow-hopefuls trooped off to the first casting.
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We swiftly scooped up her carefully ironed outfits, portfolio and brand new eyeliner and I whisked her off to Zara for some expensive but effective retail therapy and a restorative Starbucks - skinny caramel coffee lite, of course.
"I"m watching my weight, Mum, remember," she smiled tremulously.
Once home, the tears came. She wept bitterly until I told her that to us she was the most beautiful girl in the world and, with her gang of giggly mates, sporting prowess and clutch of university offers, had far more going for her than most of the dead-eyed clothes horses stilting up and down the catwalks.
Waking up: Designer Mark Fast sent plus-size models down the runway during London Fashion Week
"I felt totally gutted when Sam told me I was too fat," she said later. "I"d been so excited at the thought of meeting all those big designers. Sam was really sweet about it - when she took me aside she must have known I"d be devastated - she knows the fashion world inside out.
"I know she was trying to protect me from some of the humiliating stuff that designers might say - but I couldn"t believe I was fat.
"I eat really carefully, I exercise a lot and, if anything, on a normal criterion, I"m probably underweight."
Madeline isn"t the only girl to fall foul of the fashion industry. Canadian super model and Vogue covergirl Coco Rocha made an impassioned rant against the fashion mafia who astoundingly, given her elegant 7st 7lb frame, told her to lose yet more weight to win prestigious catwalk work at New York Fashion Week.
It was a rare, brave and probably foolhardy stance. Most models would have kept their mouths shut for fear of never working again.
Victoria Beckham recently insisted designers should be allowed to use size zero models
The fashion world is incestuous, snippy and defensive, as demonstrated by Victoria Beckham"s vapid insistence designers should have the right to favour waif-like lollipop-head anorexics if they think their clothes look better on them.
Madeline recovered and made light of the bonkers fashion world, while her girlfriends joked they"d love to be as "fat" as her. But she couldn"t understand how a leading photographer could predict a great future for her one day, only to have her hopes dashed a few days later by people in the same business.
It was a far cry from the excitement of last year when, despite my warnings about drug addiction and eating disorders, she decided to try modelling and sent out blurry snaps to big-name London agencies.
"Not a chance," I thought. "Fashion is awash with gorgeous no-hopers - and could she handle rejection?"
With my media background at the BBC, I was amazed and anxious when, after several rejections, Profile took her on, as she prepared for AS levels at her academic school, King Edward"s High in Birmingham. "Keep revising, darling. Even top models need A-levels - Lily Cole"s got into Cambridge," I said.
She compiled a portfolio of different looks, after several test shoots, usually staged at dawn in the grottier parts of East London.
Then came the red-letter day in April when Sam rang with details of her first paid shoot, for upandcoming designer Star Hu"s debut solo collection - a riot of sculptural, show-stopping frocks.
During the ten-hour session, while the make-up artist slapped on dramatic smoky eye-shadow, I tested Madeline on her Russian history and handed round Danish pastries. I probably should have chosen carrot sticks!
To Madeline"s delight, the shots appeared on Star"s website and catalogue. More work followed and she was spotted by well-known agency Adage in Birmingham, which represents her in the Midlands.
Madeline"s experience seems to sum up what is wrong with events like Fashion Week and the size zero tyranny of the industry. The sense of euphoria after a good shoot is addictive but the pain of such public and personal rejection, even when delivered with compassion, is utterly crushing.
"Most girls my age have hang-ups about their bodies, however thin they are," Madeline says, "and for someone without the support and chances that I have, being told they were too fat could easily tip them into anorexia."
How bizarre and depressing that a young girl"s sense of self-worth should be based on whether or not she can achieve freakishly skinny 34in hips and the coveted pipe-cleaner thighs, regardless of how sparky, slender and beautiful she is.
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