Milan is a city awash with some of the biggest names in fashion - Gucci, Prada, Cerutti, Biagotti, and Ferragamo - to name just a few.



Jet into Milan airport and a giant, Hollywood style billboard of Giorgio Armani welcomes you into town. Fashion is the buzzword in this famously chic city, where you can never be too rich or too thin, or so the saying goes.

But now Milan is leading the way in a sea change of attitude towards wafer-thin models. The city was the first Fashion Week to open with a plus-size show - and the announcement of a new code of conduct, under which models will have to carry a health certificate.

As the furore over too thin models rages on, the opening show in Milan featured clothes for the fuller-figured. Size 14 and 16 models sashayed at the Elena Miro fashion show, exhibiting busts, hips and bottoms to make Marilyn Munro proud.

Curves were king and body mass indices, the measure of body fat based on height and weight, were clearly not an issue.

The designer label, a staple of Milan, leads the way in Europe for making clothes for 'real women'. “We've always designed for the rounded woman,' said Giuseppe Miroglio, head of the clothing division. A woman shouldn't be skinny or fat. She should be the size that is natural to her. Women are all different but all women can be beautiful.'”

“We like to think that we design for real women,' he added. 'They're feminine and sexy and they will show a lot of décolleté. We don't think our customers should miss out on fashion just because they are not the standard sizes.”

By GAYNOR PENGELLY