Grazia Admit Digitally Slimming Kate Middleton for Royal Wedding Issue

Grazia has admitted that it slimmed down the waist of the Duchess of Cambridge by digitally altering a their cover picture of her in her Alexander McQueen wedding dress.

In its 9 May edition the weekly fashion title published a photo of what appeared to be noticeably thin princess standing alone on the day of the royal wedding, which reignited the debate over the presentation of the female form in women's magazines.

Bauer Media admitted it had digitally edited the original image, which featured Prince William clutching Kate's hand as they emerged from the wedding ceremony by erasing William entirely from the picture; her waist was also reduced in size.

The Press Complaints Commission noted: "The magazine explained how the image had been altered to remove the arm of Prince William so that the Duchess could be featured on the cover alone.

"This involved mirroring one of the duchess's arms and an inadvertent result of the change was the slimming of her waist" the PCC was quoted in the Guardian.

Grazia said it "would like to reassure all our readers that we did not purposely make any alternations to the Duchess of Cambridge's image to make her appear slimmer, and we are sorry if this process gave that impression," reports the Daily Mail.

In a statement Grazia said it had wanted "a great image of the duchess on her own, but all the photographs had the duke in too ... so we asked our reproduction house to remove him from the picture (common practice among glossy magazines). This would have left the Duchess with only one arm, so they copied over her arm to complete the picture," reports The Drum.

The final image on the front cover shows the duchess with a sharper than normal synched waist and a disconnection between the bodice of the dress and the skirt on her right side, showing where the technicians had been at work.

Sadly this is not the first image to be negatively electronically enhanced for a glossy magazine cover. In 2003, the editor of GQ admitted digitally lengthening and slimming Kate Winslet legs for a cover shoot.

Last month L'Oréal was forced to pull adverts for foundation creams featuring Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington after admitting the images had been digitally retouched.