Denmark’s Fashion Industry Implements Stricter Rules for Models

Denmark’s fashion industry is adding a new set of rules and regulations to its Danish Fashion Ethical Charter, which was born in 2007 in an industry effort to help promote healthy models and combat negative images and stereotypes in the fashion industry. Under the revised charter, models will be required to undergo a “health check,” which will include physical and psychological testing in order to make sure they’re not at risk for eating disorders or have other mental health problems. 

Models will have to be paid in actual money for their work – so no more designer samples as compensation. Models also have to be at least 16 years old in order to work for fashion lines selling adult clothes. If they are under 15, they are permitted to model children’s and teenage clothes and must be accompanied by an adult. Clients are also supposed to provide healthy food options for jobs that take more than two hours to complete. Brands who do not comply can’t show at Copenhagen Fashion Week.

These initiatives are administered by the Danish fashion industry, not the Danish government, in an effort to improve the state of working models in Denmark. In France and the U.S., the government has taken some control, first in New York with a bill giving underaged models protection as child performers and more recently in France, which has backed a bill banning super-thin models from working. 

[via Dazed, Danish Fashion Ethical Charter]

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