Why do models almost never smile on the catwalk?
AFP
They wear with the most sophisticated clothes and face of the planet but their faces, rarely smiling, express in the parades an infinite tedium. Why are models happy?
"You don't have to smile, it's that simple," explains the model Ty Ogunkoya between two catwalks of Paris Fashion Week.
For 10 years as a Top model, this Nigerian born in London never allows the slightest smile.
"I have posed for everyone, and they never asked me to smile," he tells AFP."To be honest, I would feel rare if I had to do it."
"When I walk, I think of something sad, like when my cat died," adds Klara, an 18 -year -old Slovak model."She stepped on a bus."
Why do the models have to look so sinister?"Never forget that what you look at is the clothes and not to you," she says that Victoire Macon Dauxerre, former model for Celine and Alexander McQueen, told her.
In his book "Always thinner", he tells him that he "never, never" smile.
His boss in the model agency taught him to have a seductive appearance, slightly lowering the jaw and looked up at the same time.
The successful Matthieu Villot model told AFP that the reason for the ban on smiling is very clear.
"What they want, is to show clothes and not our faces. If we smile, the attention is focused on our faces and not on clothes," says this 22 -year -old medical student.
According to fashion historian Lydia Kamitsis, it was not always the case.
The fashion of inexpressive faces is actually relatively recent.Data from the boom of brands such as Yohji Yamamoto or Comme Des Garcons, in the early eighties.
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"It was also the time of supermodels such as Cindy Crawford, Imam and Elle Macpherson that each person had their personality and emerged as a reaction to them," he explains.
"In the sixties, when the first collections were presented, the models often smiled, laughed and even danced on the catwalk," he recalls.
"Now they look like hangers that walk. It's about erasing their personality and replacing it with clothes," he says.
The anthropologist Leyla Neri, director of the New School Parsons Paris Fashion Section, coincides with that opinion.
The first appearances of disgust grimaces coincided with the popularity of actresses such as Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin in the sixties, says Neri.
It was then increasing, with the rise of feminism and "the need of women to be taken seriously in their professional lives, and the appearance of strong women, posing very serious in Armani costumes."
"In the fifties, the models smiled all the time, they were like living dolls exits from an American advertising," he adds.
"With the emancipation of women and designers like Yves Saint Laurent, a more androgynous look appeared and women became more masculine and powerful."
Contemporary designers "have a much more minimalist vision," says Neri."They want the faces and bodies as neutral as possible, to show their work on the catwalks." They no longer see models as an ideal of beauty.This is something that the public has not yet understood completely. "
Every so often, however, iconoclasts as the French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier take models smiling without complexes on the catwalk.
Others say that walking with a serious face is simply easier than smiling without being sure of how you will see.
In the last male fashion parade of British Paul Smith in Paris, several models paraded with a radiant smile.
"I didn't tell them to smile," Paul Smith told AFP after the parade."I have nothing against the fact that they smile and it was a cheerful collection. So if the clothes make them happy, then go ahead."
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