by During Paris Fashion Week in October, I received a surreal offer in the mini bar of my hotel. Next to a bottle of Tattinger and Badoit sparkling water was a 1mg pen of Ozempic. At €3,000 a night I thought it was one hell of a freebie for VIP fashionistas – a dystopian assumption, yes – but it was unfounded.
The fashion industry is bloated with users. A case in point is luxury fashion brand consultant Ozempic who has gone from a size 10 to a six. “I try to be body positive, but it’s hard when people treat you so much better when you’re thinner” they say. “I always hear conversations where someone is complaining that a model is too big, or praising someone who looks skeletal. There is unspoken pressure from the massive barrage of thin runways and campaigns.”
Originally designed as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes, Ozempic’s active ingredient semaglutide lowers blood sugar levels and regulates insulin. It does so by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone called GLP-1 that slows stomach emptying and curbs hunger—preventing blood sugar spikes in the process. Among the many nasty side effects, from severe nausea to abdominal pain, users also discovered that the once-a-week injection led to rapid, unintended weight loss.
In 2018 the US Food and Drug Administration began testing semaglutide to treat obesity, and in 2021 the sister brand Wegovy (containing a slightly higher dose of semaglutide) was officially approved as a weight loss drug. Today many health care professionals will prescribe Ozempic off-label, except for those with a BMI over 30 or who have conditions that make it difficult to lose weight naturally. But if you can overcome the appetite, many people are going to great lengths to find the mythical drug. “So much of the fashion community is on it. Not even people with an outward face like celebrities or models [but] PR, stylists, editors,” says Jeanie Annan-Lewin, stylist and creative director of Perfect Magazine.
She has been taking Ozempic for the past eight months. As a plus-size woman with polycystic ovary syndrome, Annan Lewin recently penned a personal essay for Elle on the prevalence of drugs in the fashion industry—especially among those it wasn’t intended for. “I found it everywhere I went, for weeks and weeks and weeks,” she explains. “I was surprised, and people were so free to say that they were taking it because I think it’s a really serious drug. But it would be mentioned in the same breath as a ‘Where you next going on holiday’ conversation with someone no bigger than a size 10.
For an industry that profits from insecurity, it’s no surprise that Ozempic has found a bedfellow in fashion. It is seen as a great accessory for dinners in fine restaurants, where food is gathered together. If weight were currency, power is thin. Just take these people’s word for it. “Working out is modern couture. No outfit will make you look or feel as good as a fit body.” (Rick Owens). “No one wants to see curvy models” (Karl Lagerfeld). And, of course, “Nothing tastes as good as feeling thin” (Kate Moss).
The Nineties and Nineties had a fix for dangerously thin models, but haven’t we moved on from that? In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of models including Paloma Elsesser, Precious Lee and Ashley Graham. Headlines heralded a new era of body positivity that you do. But beneath the viral runway moments and one-off plus-size covers, accusations of tokenism loom large. “There are people who have said to me, ‘You have to lose weight.’ People who erased my stretch marks on the screen in front of me, squeezed my waist and lifted my tits,” Graham told the Sunday Times earlier this year about her experience of scornful attitudes towards tougher figures in the industry. .
When Elsesser covered iD magazine in a cult Miu Miu knit miniskirt, it was later revealed that it had been cut and a fabric panel added to make it fit. The industry’s acceptance of curvy bodies is a literary illusion. Then Kim Kardashian lost 16 pounds in three weeks to fit into her Met Gala 2022 dress. Soon after, Hollywood saw massive weight loss for celebrities, from Elon Musk to the cast of Real Housewives of New York. Sharon Osbourne and Robbie Williams recently admitted that they accepted it. On TikTok the #Ozempic got more than 1.3 billion views, mostly of scary transformation videos of users before and after Ozempic.
Combine this with Y2K trends designed for ultra-slim frames like low-rise jeans and cut-out dresses returning to the trend cycle in alarming fashion — and it’s clear how deeply embedded the thinness bias is. “I was on the fence for so long,” says one private supplier, who asked to remain anonymous, of the decision to sell Ozempic, through a daunting process. “I wasn’t interested in being a part of it, because I didn’t know how it would affect people,” she continues. “I get it through a third party, so I’m not technically selling it,” they say. “I have a relationship with a pharmacy that I work closely with for my vitamins and intravenous medications. Every week they send me a stock count, and I’m free to sell whatever I want.”
With orders requested through Instagram stories and DMs, potential buyers are sent a message detailing all the information they need, which they must then sign. Payments accepted, pens sent. No prescription is required. “I know one person who sells it to a lot of fashion people like this who had to close the list because it’s too popular,” confirms Annan-Lewin.
I first started selling the pens for £150. Now they are £295. A girl took eight from me because she couldn’t find him anywhere
“I started selling the pens for £150 at first. Now they are £295,” continues the private supplier, referring to the global shortage due to rising demand. “Yesterday I had a girl take eight off me because she was on it for about three months and when she got to the end of her pen she couldn’t get it anywhere.” During the year they also noticed that more people want it who are not overweight, and have no health problems. “I have a client who works in archival fashion, and everything is zero. She was taking it because she wanted to wear the clothes.”
“I know so many people who have jumped on this bandwagon” agrees Lucy Maguire, senior trends editor at Vogue Business. “It’s a strange dichotomy, and it shows that everyone is maybe saying, ‘Yes, we want to welcome all sizes into fashion. Yes, we want to be inclusive in terms of size.’ But deep down, there is a lot of internalized fat phobia in the fashion industry.”
Maguire recently contributed to Vogue’s Annual Business Size Inclusion Report, which found that less than one percent of models this fashion season were plus size. “The runway show is a traditional form of fashion communication, it is seen as the pinnacle of brand expression,” she continues. “It’s a huge field because of the huge number of eyeballs around the world at that moment. You get that undivided full attention.”
As a result Maguire says most people see the runway show as the most important place for change. “In a runway show there are so many opportunities for them to show us diversity and inclusion. If they’re sending 30 models down a runway and they’re all the same size, it becomes more impressive,” she says, noting her disappointment to see that only 17 of the 219 brands which were shown across the four fashion cities featuring plus size looks in their spring/summer 2024 collections.
We have come to an interesting cross-point. “Instead of asking yourself, ‘Why am I at a dinner party and people are talking about these things? People seem to be going: ‘Well, I can just lose 10 pounds and then fit into society’s norms and feel better,'” says Annan-Lewin. This renewed play with thinness seems to be part of mass hysteria fueled by a so-called “miracle” drug that taps into our deepest insecurities. Ozempic feels like the ultimate test of fashion’s commitment to a truly inclusive future.
