To publicize the costumes Roberto Cavalli designed for Beyoncé‘s Mrs. Carter Show World Tour, the label released an artistic rendering of the pop star draped in a showstopping, multi-colored gown. The dress was beautiful, but the sketch distorted Beyoncé’s body, whittling down her curves to cartoonish, rail-thin proportions. “Um, where’s the bootylicious babe we know and love?” asked E!
It’s not unusual to see fashion sketches take these kinds of liberties with the human body (last year, Barneys got into trouble when they converted Minnie Mouse into a glamazon with skyscraper legs for its holiday windows collaboration with Disney), and the above image is similar in style to other Cavalli illustrations. The designer also created the costumes for The Spice Girls World Tour and you wouldn’t accuse those sketches of promoting a healthy body image, either.
Accepting these kinds of drawings as the industry standard and setting aside the question of why designers need to draw clothing intended for real women on alien stick-insects, the weirdest part of the above image is that it’s so photorealistic. Beyoncé’s face looks no different in the Cavalli sketch than it would in a highly airbrushed publicity photo.
In fact, the label had to release a statement clarifying that the picture was an artistic sketch, not a photograph:
We would like to clarify that the image of the gown created by Roberto Cavalli for Beyoncé is a sketch and not a photo, and therefore it is only meant to be a stylized and artistic vision. Roberto Cavalli loves women and more than anyone else has always exalted and highlighted the female shape with his creations, building his signature style on the glorification of sensuality and femininity.
