Skinny women are the norm at Fashion Week, but the waifs walking the runway at this year’s shows are thin even by model standards. Top designer Alex Perry has defended his choice of models, claiming he ran out of time to find healthier-sized girls, but former Vogue editor Kirstie Clements says as far as most designers are concerned, there’s no such thing as too thin.

It’s Fashion Week in Sydney and the coverage has begun about severely underweight models and the dangerous message they send to young and impressionable women.

I feel even closer to it this year, because as a former editor of Vogue, I spoke some truths about models and dieting in my book The Vogue Factor, which captured the attention of the press worldwide.

As an editor I would attend the international fashion shows each season, and after four weeks on the road seeing thin model after thin model stride down the runway, I must admit I became de-sensitised to their tiny size.

I wasn’t there to evaluate their bodies, I was there to look at clothes. It wasn’t until I touched down at Sydney Airport that the real world would reappear, and size four seemed so incongruous.

But the girls that are booked for the shows are considered to be the top models in the world and they are the size the designers and the casting agents demand. They set the rules.

If you look at the measurements of most of these top girls and do the math, you can see that only the thinnest are in demand. Aussie model Julia Nobis is one of the most highly booked catwalk girls. Her measurements are 32, 24, 34 and she’s 5ft 11in. She got the Saint Laurent campaign. Jemma Baines is 31, 23, 33. Nicole Pollard is another: 32, 25, 35 and 6ft tall. She’s in all the European magazines. Ruby Jean Wilson’s waist is a tiny 22 inches and she is 5ft 11in. She scores the Louis Vuitton campaign. Her look was based on Warhol icon Edie Sedgwick, who famously ate practically nothing.

Very thin, especially in the international market, is in. These measurements decide the sample sizes, and these are the pieces that will later be released to press.

Models are hired for their ability to fit into them. It’s a circle, and if you stand outside of that system, then, well, you’re just not working with the top tier of talent are you?

All of the models just mentioned are in Sydney and they are Paris thin. In that world, this is the ideal. But as stylist Naomi Smith said to me: “The girls always have to hover at that ideal sample size. Someone will tell them very quickly if they put on weight. But often no one will mention if they’ve lost too much.”

The girls also battle with spot reduction, like all women do. You diet to get rid of your bum, and the weight comes off your neck and shoulders. They diet to change parts of the body that are pretty great anyway.

But let’s remember that for some designers and stylists there is no such thing as too thin. They like the way the clothes hang. Many of them are not designing clothes for women with bosoms, or hips anyway.

Watching a show full of miniscule dresses modelled by sylphs this week, I said to a stylist, “I can’t imagine what that dress would like on a size 14 or 16, or if you have bosoms,” and he looked at me aghast and said, “God, they won’t be produced in those sizes!”

I once had lunch with the PR manager of a famous American fashion house and I asked him if there was a woman who worked in its offices who was a size 10 (US). That’s about a size 12 Australian. He looked at me, very puzzled. They only make sample sizes in a 4.

“What does a size 10 woman look like?” he said, genuinely perplexed. “Me,” I answered.

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