Q Why do fashion magazines use foreign models?

A Many foreign models appear in fashion magazines such as With, MORE and FRAU that cater to high fashion, and many Japanese models appear in more down-to-earth fashion magazines such as Vi Vi and CanCam.

Designer clothes of many countries appear in high-fashion magazines giving foreign models an advantage. The clothes are made to fit Western proportions and the colors are coordinated to complement light hair color and eye color to bring out a contrast, making clothes look all the finer on foreign models.

To bring these fashions closer to home to the Japanese, there are requests to use Japanese models, but foreign models are used much more frequently when the emphasis is on high fashion. When fashion magazines began to be published in succession after the war, there was a period when the models were required to be either Western or a racial mixture of part Japanese and part Western. There are now many Japanese models with proportions on par with that of Westerners who are actively modeling on the world stage.

The time will come when the contents of these fashion magazines will be adapted to accommodate both foreign and Japanese models.