"Skinny model" row ends thin week for Aussie fashion

CANBERRA, May 4 (Reuters) Australian fashion's show week wound up today amid a bitter row over stick-thin models, lacklustre reviews and claims leading local designers largely ignored the country's yearly international showpiece.

Festival organisers were accused of allowing super slim models onto catwalks despite a promise to avoid the half-starved look, which fell out of favour globally after the death from anorexia of Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston.

''We don't think the situation at this point requires rules in terms of regulating the appearance of models,'' Australian Fashion Week organiser Simon Lock told local media, promising to ban designers judged to have broken a promise to ''self-regulate''.

Newspaper photographs of ultra-skinny swimsuit models appeared through the week, despite agencies being asked not to choose models who ''would be considered to be unnaturally or extraordinarily thin, or suspected of having an eating disorder''.

Brazilian 17-year-old model Barbara Di Criddo said despite being sympathetic to Reston, who died weighing just 40 kgs (88 lbs), she felt under attack in Sydney after being grouped with three other slim models on one cover picture.

''We were born like this and are naturally thin,'' Di Criddo told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

IT'S IN THE GENES Top Texan model import Erin Wasson said most models relied on genetics rather than starvation.

''People have to face the fact that it's in the genes,'' the face of local jeans label Ksubi said.

Australian fashion businessman Danny Avidan said the show week suffered from the absence of Australia's established brands, like his own Charlie Brown and Lili.

''For an established brand to participate in the week is like Madonna going on American Idol,'' he told Australian Associated Press.

Avidan created his own controversy when security guards stepped in to stop his streetkerb ''ambush'' parade staged out of a trailer near the main show venue beside Sydney Harbour.

''I think in this week they got it wrong and therefore they're suffering the consequences, financial consequences and attendance consequences,'' he said.

Local fashion editor Edwina McCann, from the Australian newspaper, said the end of the show could not come soon enough.

''Most of them would be wise to refine their skills and collections before trying again,'' she wrote. ''In terms of inspiration, it has been a week of disappointments.'' Other critics said designers relied too much on ultra-short and baby-doll dresses, which McCann said were ''best to be ignored if you are over 20 and not a trendy stylist or starlet with very skinny brown legs''.

But organiser Lock said international buyers, especially from Asia, had made the show -- and trends in colour, metallics and micro minis -- a success.

''It's great to see the support we're getting from Asia which I really think is the new frontier,'' he said.

REUTERS AM PM1125