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.”
As Dauxerre withered away, she was in constant pain.
Her bones ached. At New York Fashion Week she was cruelly dubbed “the catwalk yeti” because, like many anorexics, she had grown a coating of downy hair on her arms and legs.
She says: “It was as if the body replaced fat with hair to protect itself from the cold.”
But in fashion’s twisted world, this seemed normal. Jetting between New York, Milan and Paris to model for top luxury brands, her thinness was celebrated.
Over lunch, her agent watched Dauxerre carefully remove the cheese and dressing from her green salad — then praised her professionalism.
She says: “He’d come to the [apartment] where I was staying and go through our stuff to check there was no chocolate or sweets.”
“Some of my friends took cocaine because it suppresses your hunger. Others threw up.”
“One of my friends ate one [cookie] a day and nothing else.”
Dauxerre was so weak she would fall down in the street.
Once, in New York, she fainted in front of her agent. She says: “He gave me a piece of chicken when I came round. God forbid you give a model sugar.”
As one of the slimmest girls on the circuit, Dauxerre was booked for job after job. But she did not realise how ill she really was.
She says: “I was not aware I was anorexic. The girls around me looked green and like they were about to die. But when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw fat.”
Dauxerre says she did not grasp what was happening, as the fashion trade had utterly dehumanised her.
She says: “I was just a clothes hanger and the clothes were more important than I was.”
“You lose all your self-esteem. No one calls you by your name. You’re expected not to talk. There is no dignity or respect.”
Dauxerre believes agencies sign up girls very young so they are easier to exploit.
She says: “They scout you when you are 17, when you are very naive. They want to be able to groom you.”
Even more disturbingly, Dauxerre says models are at risk from predatory older men in the industry and she knows girls who have been raped or sexually abused.
She says: “It happens all the time. You are invited to parties and men will be all over you.”
“My mom told me not to go to parties so I never got involved with that. I didn’t drink and never took drugs but I can easily see how it can happen.”
“You are 17, you are pretty, you are surrounded by men and you are vulnerable.”
For Dauxerre, the tipping point came one icy day in Paris, during a lingerie photo shoot. Freezing cold, she walked off the set to warm up.
The photographer was furious and complained to Elite. The agency called Dauxerre to yell at her.
She says: “They told me, ‘Who do you think you are? You are only a model.’ I knew then I’d never be more than an object to them.”
“I didn’t want to be ‘only a model’ any more.”
Dauxerre quit then and there. Elite tried to lure her back, promising her the cover of Vogue, but she refused. Feeling she had nothing left, Dauxerre hit rock bottom.
She says: “They destroyed me psychologically. I was so lost and ashamed.”
At her parents’ home, Dauxerre went from room to room gathering pills, then downed them.
She says: “I don’t know if I wanted to die but I wanted to kill the pain and that meant killing everything.”
“I regret that my little brother came into the room and asked what I was doing.”
“I told him everything was going to be OK. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital.”
Finally, Dauxerre got help. She spent three months in rehab, taking calcium pills to strengthen her bones.
Doctors likened her skeleton to a 70-year-old’s. She says: “I am really lucky I recovered because many girls don’t — they still have osteoporosis.”
“I got my periods back but some of my friends who are 24 are infertile now.”
She was left with little to show for her suffering. In eight months she earned $125,000 but the agency and her scout each took 30 percent, while deductions for travel and hotels left her with just $12,500.
Today, living in London as an aspiring actress, she glows with health. Dauxerre reckons she weighs around 126 pounds — she doesn’t own scales — and wears a size ten.
She quit modelling six years ago but only in the past six months has Dauxerre felt close to recovery.
She adds: “I can’t say I am completely OK. That would be a lie.”
Now Dauxerre is demanding the fashion industry changes — before more women’s lives are destroyed.