It has become commonplace for talk show hosts, and others who spend too much time telling us what’s wrong with our world, to criticize models for being underweight, overpaid, untalented clothes hangers.

 

We love models. They’re an integral part of the image arm of the fashion industry -- Alexandra works with them all the time. And lets face it, when they screw up, by falling down on catwalks or being photographed sniffing cocaine off of toilet tanks, we get a chance to snigger and feel oh so superior.

 

The relationship between designers and models goes back at least to the 1920s, when Coco Chanel lent clothes to the it girls of the era in the hope they’d be seen wearing them, thereby generating a buzz for Mlle Chanel’s (she insisted on never being referred to as Madam) designs and stores. It worked.

 

Supermodels, such as Linda Evangelista and Claudia Schiffer, served as reigning queens of the fashion industry from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s but, even though the terms is still commonly used, the era of the supermodel has been over since the 1990s. Sadly, they’ve been replaced in fashion magazines and ad campaigns by movie stars and pop tarts.

 

But what of the designers; they use models but do they love them? Probably not, if the recent comments made by Roberto Cavalli are indicative of their attitudes.

Roberto Cavalli

 

Cavalli has recently attacked Kate Moss, describing her as a professional clothes horse with no star quality. He says, "There are thousands of models like all the other thousands of models. Naomi Campbell is the same way. For me, models are just pieces of wood that I carve to make clothes look beautiful."

Kate Moss

 

The 68-year-old Cavalli has been talking to drug-addled singer Amy Winehouse. We can only wonder what Roberto truly thinks of her.

 

Vogue UK, April 2007

The front cover of the April 2007 edition of British Vogue featuring Kate Moss is seen in this publicity handout photo released March 9, 2007. She is wearing one of her own designs and it costs just 60 pounds (about $120 CDN.), a far cry from the pricey outfits that regularly grace the pages of the magazine.

Merry Christmas from Pete & Kate

This almost makes me wish they were back together again.