Magazine admits it did alter picture of Duchess

The cover of Grazia magazine (left), and the original shot of the Duchess on her wedding day

The fashion magazine Grazia has admitted that it did indeed alter a picture of the former Kate Middleton on her wedding day to make her look slimmer.

In its 9 May edition, the weekly magazine showed the Duchess of Cambridge standing alone and appearing almost impossibly thin.

The magazine, owned by Bauer media, said it doctored the original image of William and Kate leaving Westminster Abbey after their wedding ceremony.

First Prince William was removed from the photo and then Kate's right arm was reattached by using a mirror image of her left, to give the impression she was posing on her own. But the editing process also sizeably reduced her already svelte waistline.

After investigating a complaint, the Press Complaints Commission said: "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."

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."

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

The statement added: "Grazia takes the issue of women's body image very seriously and we would never 'slim down' a picture of a female role model."

The airbrushing of the Duchess comes after L'Oréal was last month 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.