Fashion Week Talk Centers On Waistlines

The talk this year at New York's fashion week is less about designers' hemlines than models' waistlines, CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace reports.

How thin is too thin? It's a question being directed at the Council of Fashion Designers.

"I have it written here that I haven't eaten in two weeks," fashion model Kate Dillon says, looking at pictures.

32-year-old Dillon says the problem isn't new. She was anorexic during her teenage modeling days in the 1990s.

"What the industry does is create an illusion and nobody can live up to that illusion," Dillon says.

That illusion was shattered when an 88-pound anorexic model from Brazil died last year. Spain and Italy responded first, imposing tight regulations on models' health and weight. But in America, the industry only issued non-binding guidelines.

"This did not seem like real hard, fast rules and ways to protect the young women in this industry, which should be their number one priority," says Lynn Grefe, of the National Eating Disorders Association.

But the Council of Fashion Designers, which declined CBS News' requests for an interview, is under pressure from the opposite direction backstage. Many designers simply don't want to be told what to do.

"This is our art. Whoever we want to show our clothes on, we should be able to show them on," says designer Stacey Bindet, of Alice and Olivia.

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Kelly Wallace talks to fashion designer Nicole Miller about the backlash against skinny models.

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Why not use a size 6 or size 8 model? "Because that wouldn't look good," designer Nicole Miller says. Miller only uses size 4 models.

Dillon says that mindset needs to go. And the industry needs to start using models of all shapes and sizes.

"What it does is frees people up not to worry about their bodies so much," Dillon says.

But it's a bottom-line business. And change won't likely come until super-slim no longer sells.