Because clothes look better on tall, skinny bodies. At least that’s what the stylists and the majority of their shop’s customers believe. Have you ever noticed that every woman dreams of being taller and thinner? Therefore, nothing better than showing the clothes on the body that almost every woman would like to have. “It’s like a Coca-Cola advertisement. It gives the impression that you are going to be as thin and beautiful as the model”, says stylist Mário Queiroz. Another explanation given by some specialists is that the pictures taken on the catwalks tend to make the models fat. But this is relative: a person can look both fatter and thinner depending on the angle and lens used by the photographer. There is still a practical issue: if each model had a different body type, the stylists would go crazy producing a piece of each size, according to the measurements of each one. To make it easier, the models’ bodies follow the same pattern and the clothes made for fashion shows have the same numbering. But the standard of beauty was not always the current one. Until the 1960s, models were more plump and sensual. Everything changed when the English Lesley Hornby, known as Twiggy (twig is “stick” in English), took her measly 43 kilos to the catwalks. Even so, she recently declared, “Alongside the current generation of top models, I feel fat and small.”
