Some skeletons should definitely stay in the closet

It came to my culminated attention today that we of the West are living in the midst of a fashion world personified by the walking dead - or from the looks of those hammocks beneath the eyes, the drowsy dead.

Yes, I am most assuredly referring to the ghastly appearance of all those style ambassadors for the media, the glitzy catwalk princesses that make a living out of flaunting, or as I would put it revolting the quirky styles their employers devise.

For the past decade, and now the new one upon us, debates have persisted as to whether the publication and presentation of pictures of shockingly gaunt women in fashion magazines such as Grazia and Elle is detrimental to their prime audience's social self-image.

The psychologically-induced anorexia nervosa condition, which ties negative self-perception (not self-esteem) in with severe eating disorders and subsequent life-threatening weight loss, has been correlated with the social influences of fashion mags or, more fittingly, 'glossies'.

This is, however, not the matter of which I wish to discuss, despite the debate on causality and anorexia's toxic effects on impressionable young women (15-19-year-old adolescent women mark up 40% of the cases; 90% of anorexia sufferers are female).

What concerns me at this moment in time, and this is an earnest observation several years in the making, is the convincingly ghoulish aesthetic that seems to embody that sense of cutting-edge fashion in the western world today.

Let's take for example the latest photo shoot to come stepping out of the highly-savoured realm of the New York fashion week, branded Mercedes-Benz fashion week, which showcases the best of the best in current fashion artistry.

The works of art, as I will dub them, are meticulously crafted and, quite frankly, stunning in some places (image no.4 featured in the Guardian's slide-show of the event is deftly reminiscent of a swirling black liqueur you'd see being slurped up in film noir). Others are just imbecilic (Narciso Rodriguez's encumbering "bar stool" hat at no.11 looks like one of the Stig's rejected crash-test helmets). But what I wish to mention concerns not the mash of fashion per se, but the fashion idols themselves. And I will begin by drawing attention to those crazy eyes of theirs.

From Romero's forlorn zombie stare to the astro-awry Vulcan curvatures that belong to the geek-beloved Star Trek galaxy, the eyes flash warning signs as deterrents not to reciprocate glances. In a way it feels as if it's not just the model who possess them demanding that you avoid a mutual gaze - it's the designer too. Behind the scenes or lurking within the throngs of eager fashion-eaters, he or she is telepathically perceiving what the model puppet is perceiving; aided by parasitic vision they spot the dreamers and deny them a chance of intimacy with the human beneath their prized creation.

Then there's the mouth, directly underlying the craziness of the eyes with a solemnity of lost souls. Where there would otherwise lie little nicks or natural undulations on the surface of the lips, there is only an insensitive plane of priggishness that deprives models of their humanity. Not even vibrant colouring can bring these lifeless lips back to life.

Finally there's the standard body structure, which by all means wasn't meant to portray portliness; instead it overindulges the opposite. These women, who I'm inclined to admit would under a guise of normal form would look quite agreeable, are simply skeletal. From the concave cheeks down to those bony ankles, I cannot see anything, save the clothes they're wearing, for a person to hold onto without letting it slip through their fingers like a thread of linen. They're just too darn delicate.

In the end it all boils down to the dress. What technique was used to attain that delightful twist at the hem; which pattern was employed to ensure that the layering didn't overload the top's body, etcetera.

For the world out there, there is little praise given to the ladies laundering in the limelight of these snap-pap fashion power parades, and these eerie-looking women probably understand that. But really what is the damage done to bodies that, once again in my opinion, would be far better off with a few more layers of muscle than the wafer-thin skin just resting on the bone worth?

Whatever the successes are that emerge from the glamorous outlets of the fashion world in New York this week, I just hope there's at least one reasonable-minded individual in the crowd who stops, stares into the eyes of one of the not-so-well-endowed models and tells that designer mastermind to quit scrooging around and bestow upon her a plump turkey to take home and delight in. But chances are most of them are vegetarians, which leaves me to believe those walking skeletons privy to the finesse of fashion will remain unreal women for a while yet.