At 17, Victoire Dauxerre was scouted by a top model agent and told she was going to be the next Claudia Schiffer.
But just eight months later, the brutal fashion industry and a devastating eating disorder drove the French model to attempt suicide.
At her worst, when Dauxerre weighed little more than 98 pounds, her periods had stopped and her hair fell out in clumps. She was so weak from hunger she couldn’t think straight, hallucinated and often passed out.
Yet on the surface, Dauxerre was a huge success, making catwalk appearances for Prada, Celine and Alexander McQueen. Vogue Italia wanted her to star on its cover.
Dauxerre was severely ill, yet fashion’s finest thought her frame was perfect to showcase their size-zero clothes.
She says: “The skinnier I got, the more jobs I got — so I just kept on going. When I went to my agency having lost weight, they would applaud me.
“This industry says to be beautiful you have to be skinny and sick and have no personality.”
“It is harmful to the models and harmful to ordinary women who see the models and want to look like them.”
Dauxerre, who is now 24, has written a blistering book about her time with Elite, one of the world’s top modeling agency.
She describes a disturbing cabal of designers and agents who encourage naive youngsters to starve themselves.
She says: “I think all top models have some kind of eating disorder. If you want to fit in the clothes, you don’t have a choice.”
The book reveals fashion to be a very ugly business — and Dauxerre isn’t afraid to name names.
She describes designer Miuccia Prada as a “witch” and tells how her 32A boobs were deemed too big by Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld.
She says the fashion industry wants its models to have childlike bodies but act like sexually experienced women.
Instead of three meals a day, she ate three apples
Dauxerre says: “Sometimes you feel like a prostitute. You are literally naked all the time.”
“They tell you to ‘make love to the camera’. It is very disturbing. Sometimes for castings you would have a callback at 11 pm.”
“Once, for a big brand, I had to wear just a thong and high heels and parade while the male casting directors swigged champagne. You are a piece of meat.”
Her story is not unique yet it is rare for an insider to break what she calls the “code of silence” behind fashion’s gilded facade.
Dauxerre was a shy teenager when she was scouted. While out shopping with her mom in her home city of Paris, an agent approached her and told her she could earn millions and travel the world.
It sounded like a fairytale. Dauxerre put her plans to go to college on hold and signed with Elite.
She says: “I had to go into their offices and walk for them. Then they took my measurements — my chest, waist, and hips.”
“I was 34-25-36. I was 5 foot 10 inches tall and a size six but my hips were considered too big.”
“They are really vicious and pernicious because they don’t tell you to lose weight — they just say they are going to write on your contract that you are 34 inches around your hips.”
“They say, ‘Oh, you are a size six — well, the clothes for Fashion Week are size two … it’s in two months.’”
Weight loss became an obsession. Instead of eating three meals a day, she ate three apples. Pectin in the fruit suppresses the appetite.
She says: “I also started taking laxatives. The trouble is that your body gets used to that and you have to take more and more.
“In the end they stopped working, so I started using enemas instead. It was perfect for the clothes as I was a size zero but it was terrible for my body.”
