Two models, one goal: to free women from fashion’s weight tyranny

As London fashion week opens, Rosie Nelson and Jada Sezer have joined a Women’s Equality party campaign to tackle the use of tiny clothing sizes, underweight models – and the resulting crisis of eating disorders

Grains for breakfast, vegetables for lunch, smoked salmon for dinner. No wheat, no dairy, no sugar; 45 minutes of exercise every day. It’s a draconian and unbalanced regime even for someone with a sensible reason to lose excess weight. If you’re a 21-year-old who weighs eight stone, it’s clearly both unnecessary and profoundly unhealthy. And yet this was Rosie Nelson’s daily intake and expenditure of energy for four months back in 2014, as a result of a visit to one of the country’s most powerful modelling agencies.

Nelson had started modelling work at the age of 18, when her body was still developing. When she moved from her native Australia to Britain, her intention was to continue. And the agency in question liked her look – except for the fact that she was, they said, too big. Specifically her hips, which were around the 37- or 38-inch mark, but needed to shrink to 35.

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