by During Paris Fashion Week in October I found a surreal offer in my hotel minibar. Next to a bottle of Tattinger and Badoit sparkling water was a 1 mg Ozempic pen. For 3,000 euros a night I thought it was an infernal gift for the VIP fashion clientele (a dystopian assumption, yes), but not unfounded.
The fashion industry is full of users. An example of this is the luxury fashion brand consultant who chose Ozempic and who went from size 10 to six. “I try to be body positive, but it’s hard when people treat you so much better when you’re thinner,” they say. “I constantly hear conversations where someone complains that a model is too big or praises one who looks practically skeletal. “There is an unspoken pressure from the overwhelming barrage of thinness on the catwalks and in campaigns.”
Originally conceived as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, Ozempic’s active ingredient semaglutide lowers blood sugar levels and regulates insulin. It does this by mimicking a natural hormone called GLP-1 that slows stomach emptying and curbs hunger, preventing blood sugar spikes in the process. Among the many unpleasant side effects, from severe nausea to abdominal pain, users also found that the once-a-week injectable medication caused rapid, unintentional weight loss.
In 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began testing semaglutide to treat obesity, and in 2021, sister brand Wegovy (which contains a slightly higher dose of semaglutide) was officially approved as a weight loss medication. of weight. Today, many health professionals prescribe Ozempic off-label, but only to those with a BMI over 30 or who have conditions that make it difficult to lose weight naturally. But the ability to conquer appetite has meant that many go to great lengths to obtain the mythical drug. “A lot of the fashion community is involved in this. Not even just the outward-looking people, like celebrities or models. [but] PR, stylists, editors,” says Jeanie Annan-Lewin, stylist and creative director of Perfect Magazine.
He has been taking Ozempic for the past eight months. As a plus-size woman with PCOS, Annan Lewin recently wrote a personal essay for Elle about the prevalence of the drug in the fashion industry, especially among those for whom it was not intended. “I found it everywhere I went, for weeks and weeks and weeks,” she explains. “I was surprised and people were very free in saying that they were taking it, as I think it is a pretty serious drug. However, someone no bigger than a size 10 would bring it up in the same breath as a conversation about “Where are you going on vacation next?”
For an industry that thrives on insecurities, it’s no surprise that Ozempic has found a bedfellow in fashion. It is considered an ideal complement to dinners in fine restaurants, where the food is depressingly appreciated. If peso were a currency, then thinness is power. Just take these experts’ word for it. “Exercising is modern couture. No outfit will make you look or feel as good as having a fit body.” (Rick Owens). “No one wants to see models with curves” (Karl Lagerfeld). And, of course, “Nothing tastes as good as feeling skinny” (Kate Moss).
The ’90s and ’90s had a fixation on dangerously thin models, but haven’t we outgrown that? In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of models such as Paloma Elsesser, Precious Lee and Ashley Graham. The headlines declared a new era of body positivity. But behind the viral runway moments and unique plus-size covers, accusations of tokenism abound. “There are people who told me: ‘You have to lose weight.’ People who erased my stretch marks on the screen in front of me, who pinched my waist and lifted my boobs,” Graham told the Sunday Times earlier this year of her experience with ingrained attitudes towards curvier figures in the industry. .
When Elsesser covered iD magazine with Miu Miu’s cult miniskirt, it was later revealed that it had been cut up and a panel of fabric added to make it fit. The industry’s embrace of curvier bodies is a literal illusion. Then, Kim Kardashian lost 16 pounds in three weeks to wear her 2022 Met Gala dress. Soon after, Hollywood witnessed other drastic weight losses by celebrities, from Elon Musk to the cast of Real Housewives of New York. Sharon Osbourne and Robbie Williams recently admitted to taking it. On TikTok, #Ozempic garnered more than 1.3 billion views, largely thanks to videos of alarming transformations from pre- and post-Ozempic users.
Combine this with 2000s trends designed for ultra-thin frames, such as low-rise jeans and cut-out dresses, which represent a worrying return to the trend cycle, and it becomes clear how deeply the skinny bias is ingrained. “I was undecided for a long time,” says a private supplier, who asked to remain anonymous, about his decision to sell Ozempic, after an alarming process. “I wasn’t interested in being a part of it, because I just didn’t know how it would affect people,” he continues. “I get it through a third party, so technically I’m not the one selling it,” he says. “I have a relationship with a pharmacy that I work closely with for my vitamins and IV medications. Every week they send me an inventory and I am free to sell whatever I want.”
With orders placed through Instagram stories and direct messages, potential buyers receive a message detailing all the information they need to know, which they must then sign. Payments accepted, pens sent. No prescription is needed. “I know someone who sold him to a lot of fashion people and had to close the list because he was too well known,” confirms Annan-Lewin.
I first started selling the pens for £150. They are now £295. A girl took eight from me because she couldn’t find it anywhere.
“I first started selling the pens for £150. They now cost £295,” the private supplier continues, alluding to global shortages due to increased demand. “Yesterday a girl took eight from me because she was taking it for about three months and when she got to the end of her pen she couldn’t find it anywhere.” Throughout the year they have also observed that more people who are not overweight or have health problems want it. “I have a client who works in stock fashion and everything is size zero. She took it because she wanted to wear those clothes.”
“I know a lot of people who have jumped on this bandwagon,” agrees Lucy Maguire, senior trends editor at Vogue Business. “It’s a strange dichotomy, and it reveals that maybe everyone is saying, ‘Yes, we want to welcome all sizes in fashion. Yes, we want to include size. But deep down, there is a lot of internalized fat phobia in the fashion industry.”
Maguire recently contributed to Vogue’s annual Business Size Inclusion Report, which found that less than one percent of this fashion season’s models were plus size. “The runway show is a purely traditional form of fashion communication, which is considered the pinnacle of a brand’s expression,” she continues. “It is a huge stage due to the large number of eyes around the world that are on that specific moment. You get all that attention on you.”
As a result, Maguire says most people see the runway as the most important place to change. “In a parade there are many opportunities to show us diversity and inclusion. “If you send 30 models to a catwalk and they all have the same size, then everything becomes cruder,” he adds, noting how disappointing it was to see that only 17 of the 219 brands shown in the four fashion cities presented a size-fit look. big in its spring/summer 2024 collections.
We have reached an interesting crossing point. “Instead of asking yourself, ‘Why am I at a dinner party and people are talking about these things?’ It seems like people are saying, ‘Well, I can lose 10 pounds and then conform to society’s norms and feel better,'” Annan-Lewin says. This renewed fascination with thinness appears to be part of a mass hysteria sparked by a so-called “miracle” drug that taps into our deepest insecurities. Ozempic feels like definitive proof of fashion’s commitment to a truly inclusive future.
