Ralph Lauren sorry for freakish Hamilton image

A Japanese department store caused controversy last week by using a digitally enhanced Ralph Lauren advert which seemed to show that model Filippa Hamilton's waist was thinner than her head.

Despite the Ralph Lauren legal team's best attempts to suppress the spread of the picture with various 'cease and desist' orders, this frighteningly unrealistic image has spread worldwide via the internet.

Now, Hamilton, 23, has spoken out about how the American clothing brand fired her for being too fat. The Swedish-French model says that she received a letter from Ralph Lauren in April announcing: "We're terminating your services because you don't fit into the sample clothes that you need to wear."

Hamilton, a countess whose father's family are Swedish aristocracy, was scouted on the streets of Paris as a 15-year-old, and had her first Vogue shoot a year later. Since then, she has worked with many of the fashion world's top photographers, including Mario Testino.

She's a British size eight, weighs 120lb, and feels that Ralph Lauren, a company she has worked with ever since becoming a model, have let her down. "I was shocked to see that super-skinny girl with my face. It's very sad, I think, that Ralph Lauren could do something like that."

Hamilton's lawyer, Geoffrey Menin, joined in the condemnation. "That Photoshopped image pushed all this into the open. That image was a gross distortion of what she really looks like and was professionally and emotionally harmful to her," he said. "From a professional point of view, nobody would want to hire somebody looking like that."

Ralph Lauren have apologised for allowing the emaciated image to run, saying it was "completely inconsistent with our creative standards and brand values". But while they say they are grateful for her work over the last six years, they will not be taking Hamilton back. They fired her, they said, "as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract."

The story comes at a time when some fashion magazines and designers are trying to change the culture of skinny models, but with little success. When the German magazine Brigitte recently announced it was going to use 'real women' in its photo-shoots from now on, designer Karl Lagerfeld responded that, "No one wants to see curvy women". The current controversy, he said, was all about "fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly." ·