Tag Archives: Simon Doonan

The CFDA will erect booths in the tents during Fashion Week to provide information on eating disorders, but Barneys’ Simon Doonan thinks diversity on the runway is a more pressing issue. “Eating is personal,” Doonan said at the Artistry of Fashion Award benefit luncheon in the Rainbow Room this afternoon. “A much bigger issue is why they’re not using more African-American girls.” Doonan added that he never tells people to look to the fashion industry to find healthy role models. “It’s always been extreme, even going back to the ancient Egyptians. In the Renaissance they wore corsets made of wooden slats.” He continued, “At the moment fashion is very thin-orexic. The archetypes are extremely thin, but that will change. It’s like that stupid walk they used to do where they would walk like that” — Doonan demonstrated by stomping his feet — “but eventually they stopped walking like that. It had to work its way through.”

By Jocelyn Guest for NY Mag