Christian Model Kylie Bisutti's Clothing Line
Wow! . . . in a wonderful way, was my first thought when I saw this quote from former Victoria's Secret lingerie model Kylie Bisutti in a September 2012 interview on stayfamous.net.
I definitely want to start my own clothing line. It’s something that I’m really passionate about. I want it to be based on modesty and I really want it to be for women and girls of all sizes, rather than just the stick thin model figure. I want it to be something that girls of any size and age could see themselves wearing.
Kylie left her high-paying role with Victoria's Secret because she felt convicted as a Christian to honor her husband through increased modesty. When I first researched Kylie's story for the forum post Fashion Model Kylie Bisutti's Decision for Modesty, I read the full history of her @VSKylie Twitter account and noticed the progression of modesty she was experiencing, from being comfortable in revealing clothing to wanting to cover up more as the months went along.
Even after her decision in December 2011 to leave Victoria's Secret, her clothing choices for several news interviews that followed in the wake of that decision would not have been considered modest by the average person. Yet, in less than a year, Kylie has made great progress toward true modesty in her clothing choices, and I am excited to see that she now wants to start a modest clothing line. Kylie is proof that someone who is comfortable in the skimpiest of styles can make a genuine change toward modesty, and in Kylie's case, it came through her reading of the Bible. She has often mentioned in interviews the influence of Proverbs 31 as a motivation for changing her apparel to honor her husband.
The stayfamous.net interview mentioned above also contained a quote from Kylie about the reality she faces in almost any modeling job while trying to maintain modesty not only in clothing, but also in attitude.
I’ve stepped away from a lot of modeling jobs, because even if you’re fully clothed, they still want you to portray some sort of selling of sex, because that’s what sells in our society. So even some jobs that I’ve done where I’m fully clothed, it’s just the poses and the facial expressions that they want – it’s all based around the selling of sex. So I haven’t really been focused on [modeling] as much.
This statement also shows growth, since earlier in the year she had told interviewers that lingerie was the only area she intended to cut out of her work absolutely, though she did want to focus on modeling jobs that were more modest.
When I worked as a patternmaker in New York, I saw firsthand how rare it is for models to maintain any standard of modesty on most jobs. The clothing itself may or may not be modest, but the changing areas are rarely private, and throughout fittings, photo shoots or runway shows, designers and sewing technicians are required by the nature of the work to touch and see models in ways that violate privacy. At one time, prior to my New York fashion industry experience, I thought modeling could be fun work. After observing models at work up close, I was deeply disturbed by the levels of immodesty that young female models endure and have since come to believe that modeling is not a career a Christian should pursue. Added to the immodest environment, with today's media explosion over the Internet, photos can be pirated, Photoshopped and used inappropriately. All this is completely beyond the control of the original owner of the images. Once spread online, photos can almost never be completely erased from the web even with an international legal battle, and a woman can be haunted for the rest of her life if her public photographs are misused. I applaud Kylie for her decision to move away from the modeling industry as a whole. The reasons detailed above are why plans are in place to do all product photography using mannequins for the Fashion Belle modest sewing pattern collection.
As an interesting side note, Kylie is doing a project on her home website blog to demonstrate the intense amount of preparation that goes into modeling for a runway show. Many girls think professional modeling is easy or is reserved only for the most beautiful. Kylie seeks to prove that magazine and television images do not represent reality and that models prep for photo shoots in extreme ways not recommended for daily life. So far, Kylie has lost weight to show how thin it is necessary to be for a major photo shoot. Her cheekbones are prominent after the weight loss, and she says she intends to gain the weight back at the end of this 30-day project, since she doesn't like herself that thin. She has also done tanning sessions, something that is required for models but that has long-term damaging effects to the skin. She has posted photographs of herself before and after Photoshop work. The stayfamous.net interview quotes her as saying one of the final steps will be to add makeup, hair extensions and fake eyelashes. It is reassuring to know that the pretty faces all around us in the media have so much help looking that way. Kylie is generous to undergo a 30-day transformation to document the process for our benefit, even though this time she has no runway contract as a motivation. Keep up the wonderful progress toward modesty, Kylie!