Body shapes steal fashion limelight

As fashionistas and celebrities poured into the British capital for one of the most hyped fashion weeks in years, organisers found themselves defending their decision not to ban super skinny women from the catwalks.

"We feel strongly that banning is not the right course to take. It's very discriminatory. You can't tell by looking at a model and you can't tell by weighing a model whether she is suffering from an eating disorder," Hilary Riva, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, told reporters.

Responding to calls for regulation, the council, which organises London Fashion Week, has issued guidelines to designers for the autumn/winter shows urging them to use only healthy models to show their collections.

Eating disorder campaigners for the first time were also patrolling backstage at some shows, distributing leaflets and a helpline number to models.

One restaurant popular with the fashion crowd said it was offering free food to models to encourage them to eat more.

But unlike their counterparts in Milan and Madrid, the London organisers stopped short of an outright ban on skinny models, who critics say encourage eating disorders.

Peter Ingwersen, the Danish founder of fashion label Noir who showed a masculine collection on Monday, full of neat, tailored pieces, said a ban was not the way forward.

"It's not enough just to say ban, ban, ban, because any law will never change that. It's always been there and it'll always be there. The only way forward is education," he said.

Noir's fitted shirts, belted trenchcoats and flowing evening gowns went down the catwalk on the backs of two of Britain's best known models, Lily Cole and Erin O'Connor both of whom have been the subject of media speculation about their body size.

Voluminous gowns were also the theme at Monday's show by Dane Peter Jensen and Duro Olowu, a Nigerian-born former lawyer who agreed with the decision not to ban skinny girls.

"I think it's a bit hypocritical considering in Hollywood you have all these actresses who are obviously anorexic and they still put them on covers," he said.

It is upstart stars such as Olowu and designers Christopher Kane and Todd Lynn who are credited with putting the buzz back into this London fashion week after years of playing poor cousin to glamorous fashion capitals Paris, Milan and New York.

Fashion bible US Vogue last month enthusiastically showcased some of London's rising fashion stars and its online site Style.com reported on Monday that London was "back on a fashion high it hasn't seen for a decade".

But despite London's new cool this week's hottest ticket is not for a home-grown product, but for American designer Marc Jacobs's one-off show on Friday to coincide with the opening of his London store. Hollywood glitterati are expected to grace the front row.