See the video of Filippa Hamilton in an interview with Ann Curry:

Hamilton told Ann Curry, host of the TODAY show on Wednesday, Oct 14, 2009 in New York. According to a post on the MSNBC website, Hamilton stated, “They said I couldn’t fit in their clothes anymore.” Hamilton also said that Lauren wrote a letter to her agent with the following statement: “We’re terminating your services because you don’t fit into the sample clothes that you need to wear.”

Ralph Lauren denied that Hamilton’s termination was for being too large. In a statement to the media, the designer said that they considered Hamilton to be an important part of their imaging and branding and that they regretted that their relationship came to an end because of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract. Ralph Lauren’s full statement can be read online here.

In an interview with Ann Curry on the TODAY show, Hamilton said that she had been working for Ralph Lauren since she was 15 years old. “I did everything that I could,” she said, “I was very loyal to them. I was on time every time.”

Photoshop Disaster

News of her firing has now come on the heels of a Photoshopping controversy. Hamilton told Curry in the interview that she was fired by Ralph Lauren through a letter to her agency several months earlier in April, 2009.

Digitally altered image resulting in a distorted image of a woman's body

She said that she was not intending to go public with her complaint, but she changed her mind later when the Internet site BoingBoing.com announced that a Photoshopped image of her showed up in a mall in Japan.

The advertising image showed a painfully emaciated woman and was emblazoned with the Ralph Lauren name. Bloggers were quick to notice that Hamilton’s head was bigger than her hips in the badly distorted image.

In the MSNBC article, Hamilton’s attorney, Geoffrey Menin, remarked that the retouched image was “grotesque” and that it made her look “like a cartoon.” Menin emphasized that the distorted photo is damaging to Hamilton. “Who wants to hire somebody that looks like that?” he asked.

Ralph Lauren pulled the ad right away then made legal moves to demand that the images be taken off the Internet. In a statement about the matter by the Ralph Lauren company, there was a disclaimer: “We have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body.”

Hamilton said that the distorted image motivated her to speak out publicly about the matter in spite of the disclaimer from Ralph Lauren.

Hamilton told Curry in the TODAY Show interview, “It’s not a good example when you see this picture.” She emphasized that young women would look at it and think that it’s normal to look like that. “It’s not,” she said. She said it made her sad when she saw her face on that “super-extremely skinny girl,” which wasn’t her. Remarking about Ralph Lauren wanting to have this kind of image, Hamilton said, “It’s an American brand … and it’s not healthy, and it’s not right.”