Still Skinny in Milan

MILAN, Italy, Feb. 27, 2007 — -- Talk to any model backstage at a Milan fashion show and this is what they'll tell you: Models are people who are naturally skinny.

They're right. Some models, a lot of models, are indeed naturally skinny. They're teenagers who haven't quite grown into themselves yet.

But for some, chasing the model shape can be fatal. Earlier this month, Eliana Ramos was found dead in her bed from heart failure. The elfin 18-year-old model from Uruguay had watched her sister Luisel collapse and die at a fashion show just last year.

According to the girls' father, Luisel had been eating only lettuce leaves in the months before she died. In November, Ana Carolina Reston, a Brazilian model who apparently ate only apples and tomatoes, died weighing just 88 pounds.

Something had to be done. People outside the notoriously closed world of fashion were beginning to ask questions. And in December -- with fanfare and a flourish -- the Italian government and the big guns of Italian fashion signed what they called a "self-regulating code" to combat anorexia.

There was no legislation, just grand statements. "We are asking the Italian fashion business to at least try and develop a differentiated idea of beauty," said Giovanna Melandri, Italy's minister for youth and sports.

Last week came the test, at the first show of Milan's highly anticipated Fashion Week. The models were shapely, voluptuous, you might even say Rubenesque. Had fashion changed its spots?

No. False alarm. The first collection of the show was designed by Elena Miro. She's a specialist who designs for what is, in the fashion world, a niche market: sizes 6 to 22, the so-called "real woman."

It seems like that "self-regulating code" may be toothless. "Nightline" went to some shows and hung around backstage, and from what we saw, most designers think the catwalk still belongs to the size 0.

Backstage at one show, an aspiring model, clutching her portfolio, was asked to open her coat … not to see whether she was too skinny, but to see whether she was too fat.

And why do models have to be thin? Just before her Moschino collection hit the runway, designer Rosella Jardini told us, "Because they make the clothes look better."