The banning of high street fashion adverts which featured models who looked “unhealthily thin” has led industry experts to warn of a return to the super skinny trend.
The aesthetic characterised by models with hollow faces and protruding bones was seen in the 1990s and early 2000s but in more recent years been pushed aside to allow space for the body positive movement which embraced curves.
However Zara, Next and Marks & Spencer have all had adverts banned in recent months over models who “appeared unhealthily thin”. The advertising watchdog has told the BBC it has seen a “definite uptick” in complaints about such ads.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said in 2025 it had received five or six of these complaints a week but in the two weeks after July’s M&S ad ban it had more than 20.
In 2024 it received 61 complaints about models’ weight but it only had grounds to investigate eight.
The figures are tiny but it is something the watchdog is keeping a close eye on, along with cracking down on illegal adverts for prescription-only weight loss drugs.
ASA guidelines state that advertisers should ensure that they don’t present an unhealthy body image as aspirational.
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Charli Howard is a model and body positivity activist
Model and activist Charli Howard wrote a viral open letter after being dropped by her modelling agency for being “too big” despite being a UK size six to eight.
A decade on she says: “I think we’re on the cusp of seeing heroin chic return.”
The phrase heroin chic was used in the early 1990s, when some models were extremely thin, pale and had dark under eye circles reminiscent of drug use.
Ms Howard says the high street adverts are as worrying as images being shared on social media as “thinspiration”.
“Some women are naturally thin, and that’s absolutely fine. But deliberately hiring models who appear unwell is deeply disturbing,” she said.
The ASA in all its recent rulings, did not deem any models to be unhealthy. In the case of Next it acknowledged that in other shots of the same model she appeared healthy. Instead it said the pose, styling and camera angles made each of the models in the retailers adverts appear thinner.
M&S said the model’s pose was chosen to portray confidence and ease and not to convey slimness. Next said the model, while slim, had a “healthy and toned physique”.
Next
This Next advert was banned for portraying the model as “unhealthily thin”
Zara, which had two adverts banned last week, said that both models had medical certification proving they were in good health.
“Lighting definitely plays a role – it can bring out cheekbones, collarbones, and ribcages,” Ms Howard said.
“After the body positivity movement of the 2010s, it was sadly inevitable fashion might swing back… and we know just how harmful it can be,” she said.
‘Not being thin enough’
Instagram/MissCharHolmes
For model and yoga teacher Charlotte Holmes, the demand for thinner models is nothing new.
During her 20-year career she noticed “a brief moment of increased inclusivity” but was still turned down for jobs for “not being thin enough.”
“The body positivity movement raised awareness, but it didn’t fully change the system. Now, it feels like we’re back where we started,” she says.
The 36-year-old was crowned Miss England in 2012 and came fourth in Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model in 2010.
She believes “ultra-thin” has always remained the “silent standard” for models.
“Terms like ‘heroin chic’ and trends like ‘skinnytok’ show how quickly harmful ideals can resurface. It’s not progress, it’s repetition,” she says.
‘Many women are naturally very slim’
Zara
This Zara advert was recently banned by the UK advertising regulator
Fashion journalist and consultant Victoria Moss does not think we are facing “heroin chic” but instead connects the trend to the rise of weight loss injections.
“What’s happening at the moment across broader culture is about thinness being held up as a moral health imperative, driven by the fervour over GLP-1 weight loss medication,” she says.
Ms Moss acknowledged many celebrities, like Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey, have visibly shrunk before our eyes.
But she still thinks it is unusual to see very slim models in High Street fashion campaigns, saying it is “more a catwalk phenomenon”.
“I think in all these cases the models have been very young, it must be incredibly upsetting for them to become the focus of these banned adverts. Many women are naturally very slim and it is wrong to cast aspersions,” she says.
‘Body diversity is key’
Simone Konu-Rae stylist and senior lecturer in fashion communication at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London says while it is important to “appreciate that the human body comes in a range of shapes and sizes”, being thin is not necessarily back in fashion “it simply never went away”.
“High Street brands use runway models to elevate their collections,” she reckons.
“The High Street is saying ‘look, we have the same model as your favourite luxury brand, and our products look just as good at a fraction of the price’,” she adds.
Ms Konu-Rae says the problem is not that the models aren’t healthy but that this is “not the norm for many people, and trying to achieve this body type can be harmful.
“Showing more body diversity is key to showing people they can be fashionable and stylish without having to change who they are,” she says.
‘Return of 90’s silhouettes’
Personal stylist Keren Beaumont says the comeback of nineties fashion – such as ultra-low rise jeans and strappy slip tops – could be to blame.
“With these re-emerging trends in silhouettes, we see hip bones and chests exposed and in keeping with the original presentations of these silhouettes, these are being shown on very, very thin models,” she says.
“My hope is that the recent imagery from Next, M&S and Zara will be a reminder to brands to maintain the diversity we have seen in models in recent years and not to regress back to outdated standards.”
Matt Wilson at the ASA says the issue highlighted brands’ responsibilities and “the thoughtfulness they need to take”.
“Societally we know there’s a problem with eating disorders and we must continue to ban adverts that may cause harm.”
If you are concerned about the issues raised in this article, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.
Consumer tech investing has fallen out of fashion in the last four years. A small but vocal cohort of VCs is rallying to bring it back.
The VC boom and subsequent bust of the early 2020s hit consumer startups particularly hard. Many investors, burned by the crash, set their focus on startups serving businesses that could deliver reliable contract-based revenue — and, in the past two years, that could more readily capitalize on venture’s AI gold rush.
But other VCs believe AI will change the game for startups selling to consumers, too.
“It’s always darkest before the light and the pendulum for consumer is now swinging back, due to AI,” said Nicole Quinn, a consumer-focused VC at Lightspeed Venture Partners, in an X post in January.
The especially bullish investors are doubling down on consumer to “buy the dip” as other VCs stay away. Mercedes Bent stepped down from her role at Lightspeed Venture Partners earlier this year to raise money for a firm she’s launching alongside former New Enterprise Associates partner Vanessa Larco, called Premise Venture Partners, which will invest exclusively in consumer startups.
“Everyone’s moving away from consumer investing at the wrong time. It’s classic loss aversion,” she told Business Insider. In Bent’s view, their loss is her gain.
In addition to Premise, consumer-focused funds like Hobart Ventures (founded by former Raya and Dispo exec TJ Taylor) and Parable (founded by ex-A16z partner Anne Lee Skates) have launched in the past year. Other VC mainstays, like Menlo Ventures, Maveron Ventures, or Bessemer Venture Partners, are continuing to place bets in the category.
There’s no shortage of hurdles in their path.
According to Silicon Valley Bank, the amount closed by VC funds listing consumer as a core focus hit a seven-year low in 2024, totalling about $9 billion, compared to $65 billion in 2021. Meanwhile, consumer startups on Carta raised 47% less cash in the first quarter of 2025, according to Carta, which said in a June report that the sector appears to be stabilizing at a “new normal” for funding that’s significantly down from 2019 to 2022.
Consumer startups also risk flaming out after a moment in the spotlight. Look no further than 2021 breakout social network Clubhouse, which raised over $100 million from VCs and received a $4 billion valuation, only to fizzle in popularity after companies like Twitter (now X) built copycats. Some consumer startups, like TikTok rival Flip, end up shutting down.
But investors, including at mega-firms like Andreessen Horowitz, increasingly think AI could usher in new consumer business models that enable unprecedented growth.
“This shift allows consumer companies to scale in ways that were once impossible — and to become big businesses (on a revenue basis) in months, not decades,” said Olivia Moore, an A16z partner focused on AI investments, in a September blog post.
Consumer’s big money question
Some remain skeptical about how consumer tech startups can make money as Big Tech giants dominate.
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Brian Sugar, the cofounder of media brand PopSugar and founding partner of Sugar Capital, doesn’t think the industry has figured out how to solve the monetization and distribution problems created by the last consumer tech boom.
“If you have a consumer hit like ChatGPT, which is truly a new thing, you can get that level of traction,” Sugar told Business Insider. “But I don’t think AI all of a sudden changes what’s happened in the consumer technology landscape.”
Blockbuster AI tools have captured the zeitgeist, from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to Anthropic’s Claude, but many of these companies appear to rely more heavily on revenue from other businesses rather than subscriptions from individual users, with only about 3% of consumers paying to use premium AI services, according to Menlo Ventures.
But investors buying into consumer tech are betting that LLMs will bring the same kind of shift to user behavior, and thus to monetization opportunities, that the iPhone brought in the late 2000s.
“Today, I’m telling all of my companies, figure out distribution via ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity. They’re not optimized yet — those companies haven’t even begun to take a profit from the distribution they’re creating. But one day they will, sometime in the next five years,” Bent said. “If you can’t be the entity that controls the distribution, then optimize your customer acquisition costs by figuring out what’s the latest up-and-coming platform.”
Mercedes Bent, cofounder and partner at Premise.
Lightspeed Venture Partners
Subscription models have become familiar to users, too. Half of Americans online have at least four paid monthly subscriptions, according to Forrester. Consumer AI startups are catching on and charging monthly for their products to secure more predictable revenue. Some are even implementing usage-based models, with higher costs or the option to buy additional “credits” for more active users.
For instance, Rosebud, an AI journaling startup backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, is free to use but charges users a $13 a month subscription fee for its more in-depth AI tools, like long-term memory or voice transcription. Image and video generator Krea, backed by A16z, offers plans from $10 to $60 a month based on the number of tasks users want the model to perform, and the option to buy additional credits exceeding those tasks.
Natalie Dillon, a partner at consumer-only VC firm Maveron, said she expects more consumer tech companies to diversify their businesses to take advantage of new advertising options that’ll appear if and when OpenAI and its LLM competitors begin running ads for free users.
“Right now, a lot of these businesses are very subscription-based because that’s a model that is comfortable with consumers today. I think over time we’ll actually see more ad-driven startups, but that market and that network just haven’t been built yet,” she said.
Investors are oggling white spaces in consumer AI
Capturing consumers’ attention is harder than ever, but startups may yet be able to attract fresh eyes — and checks — in certain segments. Consumer startups peddling AI assistants, for example, raised a total of $1.3 billion from US-based VCs in 2024, according to Silicon Valley Bank.
Granola, an AI assistant that takes notes in meetings, raised $43 million in May. Alta, an AI assistant that helps consumers choose what to wear, announced an $11 million seed fundraise in June.
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Amy Wu Martin, a partner at Menlo Ventures (which led Alta’s seed round), said she anticipates that a “rich ecosystem of specialized consumer AI products” across categories like healthcare, shopping, and entertainment will emerge in the “next couple of years.”
In gaming, startups like Northzone-backed Hidden Door, launched in August, are making fiction interactive with AI. Whoop and Oura, both valued at billions of dollars in their latest fundraises, use AI to track and analyze health and wellness data collected via their wearables. Social networks and dating apps are also leveraging AI and securing early-stage investments or spots in buzzy accelerators like A16z Speedrun, such as dating startup Sitch.
“Every time we’ve had a major enabling technology show up, it’s led to the rise of a new social network dynamic,” said Kent Bennett, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.
Sitch launched in New York City in 2024.
Sitch
Not every consumer startup needs AI, however. Sugar said the best-performing consumer company in his portfolio is Locket, a social media app that lets users share photos with their friends and family via a widget on their phones’ home screens. The app, which doesn’t rely on AI, went viral on TikTok in early 2022 and has become especially popular with preteen users, he said.
Each generation tends to stick with the consumer tech platforms they grew up with — Facebook for Gen X, Instagram for millennials, and TikTok for Gen Z, Sugar said. He thinks Gen Alpha, the next generation of consumers, could be up for grabs for the next startup that can capture and retain their attention.
That proposition, while intuitive, comes with plenty of risk. Character AI shows just how fraught such a contest can be. The company, which notched a $2.7 billion licensing-and-acquihire deal with Google last year, has drawn millions of young users to its AI-generated companions. But it’s also come under fire for inadequate safeguards, including a lawsuit that claims one of its chatbots played a role in a teenager’s suicide.
Just this month, the FTC launched an inquiry into companies like Character AI and the impact AI companions are having on children.
“The user-created characters on our site are intended for entertainment and we have prominent disclaimers in every chat to remind users that a character is not a real person and that everything a character says should be treated as fiction,” a spokesperson for Character AI told BI in a statement. They added that the startup has “put a tremendous amount of resources” toward trust and safety.
So, is consumer back?
Dillon said that consumer investing boomerangs in and out of vogue: “We’re in a pattern that we’ve seen before.”
Interest in consumer typically retreats as a result of macroeconomic pressures, she said. When a new technological shift arrives — right now, that’s AI —excitement returns.
Meanwhile, Bennett said he thinks some investors have overcorrected in ditching consumer tech altogether.
“There are enough people who were burned in the last 10 years investing in direct-to-consumer stuff that may have told themselves that consumer stinks,” he said. “There’s a little bit of that hangover from that top-down lesson.”
But when startups do get it right, the potential upside is enormous.
“It’s really hard, but when you hit it, you instantly have access to trillion-dollar markets,” he said. “If you want to win the consumer over as a product, you just have to show up with something that is a miracle.”
Google, along with Pennsylvania state officials and business groups, announced the AI Accelerator for Pennsylvania small businesses on September 12, 2025.
The program was introduced at the AI Horizons Summit by Google’s Selin Song, Governor Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce, and Team Pennsylvania to provide local businesses with free artificial intelligence resources.
What the AI Accelerator program includes
The program is part of Google’s national AI Works for America initiative and offers Pennsylvania businesses several no-cost resources to improve their AI skills and adopt new tools.
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Live workshops held across the state for hands-on training.
Self-paced online courses covering AI fundamentals and prompting.
Google Career Certificates for developing skills in high-demand fields.
Hands-on training through local workshops
A central part of the accelerator is a series of interactive workshops conducted throughout Pennsylvania. A designated Pennsylvania AI Coach leads these sessions in partnership with local community organizations.
The first workshop was held on the day of the announcement for 50 small businesses, providing practical training on how to apply AI.
How to access the training resources
Pennsylvania small businesses and their employees can access the online courses and register for career certificate training in fields like cybersecurity, data analytics, and project management. No prior experience is required for the certificate programs.
A survey from Deloitte of businesses participating in Ireland’s Best Managed Companies programme finds two-thirds deploying AI, while one-third see talent and rising costs as key concerns.
Nearly two-thirds of top Irish companies (62pc) have adopted AI technologies to support their operations, according to new research from Deloitte and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, while unsurprisingly that figure rises to 94pc when it comes to telecoms, media and “ technology-driven sectors”.
Employee support and internal productivity (28pc), operational efficiency and automation (22pc), and sales/marketing and customer engagement (15pc) were cited as the top use cases for AI, while 55pc of companies surveyed said operational process improvements were the leading innovation priority.
Other findings included that rising business costs remain a key concern (33pc), while close to one-third said talent acquisition and retention remained crucial as 28pc of companies said it was their biggest barrier to growth.
The current geopolitical and regulatory challenges also arose as a significant barrier to growth and priority area for respondents. One-in-four companies (25pc) said they were “closely monitoring policy changes and trading dynamics”.
Nearly two-thirds (65pc) of those surveyed said developing new products and services will play a key role in their growth plans over the next five years while some 55pc said they expect to grow their business through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), rising to 76pc for tech and media companies.
International expansion and increasing headcount were each cited by 52pc of companies, rising to 71pc among tech companies.
The findings come from a survey of 115 indigenous, private businesses that are participants in Deloitte’s Ireland’s Best Managed Companies programme, the winner of which will be announced on 25 September. The programme includes some 129 companies in sectors from retail and hospitality to manufacturing and construction with a combined turnover of €15bn and a total of 45,000 staff.
“Innovation is a key theme; and across every industry, launching new products and services is the top growth strategy for the next five years,” said Brian Murphy, Deloitte lead partner for Ireland’s Best Managed Companies awards programme.
“These companies are not just talking the talk, they’re walking the walk, with 62pc already harnessing the power of AI to enhance productivity.
“This survey of Ireland’s Best Managed Companies sends a clear message: we must champion our homegrown businesses, fuel their growth and support their scaling journey to become the next wave of great Irish success stories,” Murphy said, echoing calls in recent weeks from other supporters of indigenous companies ahead of Budget 2026, including Scale Ireland and the IVCA.
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