Looking tasty... who said models only eat cotton wool?

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,’ Kate Moss declared in 2009; Karl Lagerfeld’s daily sustenance consists of ten cans of Diet Coke, a protein shake and some steamed apple. Historically, fashion and food are hardly the most comfortable of bedfellows. But despite serious ongoing issues about the health of models and their influence on young girls, it seems planet fashion is waking up and smelling the Krispy Kremes, as models begin to realise that Hunger isn’t only the name of photographer Rankin’s fashion magazine. From supers tweeting feverishly about greasy burgers, or being given their own cooking shows, to the tidal wave of fashionistas’ food snaps on Instagram, fashion is having a very public, very giddy love affair with food (carbs included).

Cara Delevingne, the omnipresent young British model with the fierce eyebrows, frequently tweets about her love of fast food. ‘First thing I do when I get to America… get a McDonald’s,’ she posted recently. Her friend Rita Ora then posted a picture of her, all wide-eyed and gleeful, gorging on the burger. Delevingne’s pre-show routines have been noted, too. On the eve of last November’s Victoria’s Secret show, she said backstage that she’d ‘had McDonald’s for lunch and pizza for dinner. I need to eat a lot otherwise I feel faint — I get in the worst moods if I don’t eat.’

‘She just loves a cheeseburger like everyone else,’ says Francesca Burns, fashion editor of British Vogue. Only Delevingne isn’t everyone else. Surely there’s a point to make about public figures, particularly models, having a good relationship with food. ‘Definitely,’ says Burns, who herself is a food obsessive — ‘It’s the linchpin of my life’ — living a stone’s throw from Borough Market and with her own food blog. ‘Everyone is crazy about Cara and everything she does attracts attention. I think it’s important for any public figure to have a healthy relationship with food.’

Other models turning up the heat in the kitchen are Jourdan Dunn, who now has her own food show, Well Dunn with Jourdan Dunn, on Jay-Z’s YouTube channel Life+Times. And forget low-cal carb-shirking, Dunn is all about fried chicken, jerk pork and rice and peas. ‘I’m not trying to become a “model chef”, I just wanted you all to see another side of me. Cooking is just something I really enjoy doing,’ the 22-year-old British model tweeted after the first show aired in December 2012. ‘What’s the point of having jerk if it’s not going to knock your socks off?’ she asks, pounding away at garlic bulbs as they fly off the chopping board. The first show ended with a mantra, of sorts: ‘I can eat, I do eat!’

Some, like Karlie Kloss, are keen bakers. The 20-year-old American model debuted her range of oatmeal chocolate chip biscuits, Karlie’s Kookies, at Fashion’s Night Out in New York last September. A collaboration with pastry chef Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar, New York’s super-hip purveyors of Cereal Milk and naughty-but-delicious Crack Pie, the gluten-free, dairy-free, agave-sweetened Kookies were a real talking point. Kloss makes no secret of the fact she wants to spin Karlie’s Kookies into a proper business.

She has also contributed to a new book, Model Kitchen (available at Net-a-porter), compiled by model and food fanatic Cesar Casier. ‘I have a great passion for food and for fashion,’ says Casier, who models for YSL and Dolce & Gabbana. ‘I left home to model and didn’t want to go to fast-food restaurants so I learned to cook. I decided to make a cookbook about what models eat to prove that we do eat, but when we eat, we eat healthy, fresh and low in calories.’ (Someone tell Big Mac Cara, quick.)

Other contributors include Lily Donaldson (kale salad), Milla Jovovich (baked salmon and green asparagus), Lindsey Wixson (chocolate chip cookies with real sugar!) and Julia Restoin-Roitfeld (roast chicken and quinoa). Kloss contributed a fresh mango salsa. ‘I think the fashion industry has experienced a lot of bad press when it comes to food,’ says Burns. ‘But this new obsession has meant people have become very conscious about it. I think we might be experiencing a food revolution.’

Some models have even said they’d pack it all in for a life revolving around food. In a recent interview, Lara Stone said she wants to open a ‘good chips place’ called Lara’s Baps and Buns. ‘There’s not a proper caff here,’ she said. ‘I’d like to have my own burger place. They’re all too fancy. [My life] is quite fancy, but I still like chips. That’s the plan.’

It’s not just models with a hankering for a life behind the counter. Designer Giles Deacon recently bought a two-storey flat in Clerkenwell above a kebab shop, and snapped that up as well. He has plans to turn it into a bar and snack venue. ‘I get itchy feet and like new challenges,’ he told The Sunday Times.

The upside of this growing attention to food is that catering in the industry is improving. People are more interested in good-quality food. ‘Stella McCartney always has amazing catering,’ says Burns. At her dinner-party presentation last February Stella served a vegetarian-friendly banquet of Hyde Park sweet chestnuts, Sicilian blood oranges, saffron risotto, Périgord black truffles and Wigmore cheese on toast, while the likes of Shalom Harlow and Amber Valletta danced on the tables.