Skinny jeans spark weight loss frenzy

You may have seen Kate Moss wearing the latest style of Sass & Bide jeans and thought: "perhaps if I dropped a size I can fit into a pair also." And so it is with the latest fashion for "skinny" jeans this season as women are losing weight to fit into the tiniest drainpipe trousers and cigarette pants. Stockists are reporting a sharp increase in demand for the smallest sizes and, according to designers, a standard small clothes size is no longer eight but six.

The style prompted concerns that fashion was becoming increasingly divorced from ordinary women, who might be driven to disregard their health as a result. High fashion boutiques, such as Matches, which has a string of designer shops in west London, and Browns in the Bond Street area, report that they immediately sold out in the smallest sizes of jeans this season - sizes four to six. One of the most sought-after styles is the £130 "skinny-fit" jeans by the Australian designers Sass & Bide - made famous by Kate Moss.

Waiting lists for the grey version, in which she has been photographed in New York and London, have run into thousands. The jeans have also been worn by the American actresses Kate Bosworth and Chloë Sevigny, both of whom are "fashionably" slim.