The next BIG thing
Posted by Lucky on Jan 12, 2010
SOMETHING strange seems to be happening in the world of fashion.
Where once lanky, size-zero sticks stalked the catwalk, a plus-size revolution has been quietly taking place.
Don’t believe me? Then check out this month’s edition of American style magazine V.
Instead of hiding womanly curves, the mag has embraced them, dedicating the entire issue to body size.
Flaunting their Rubens-esque curves in designer swimwear are five plus-size models, pictured in a high-fashion photo shoot by top Norwegian photographer Solve Sundsbo, the man behind campaigns for Dior, Gucci and YSL.
All those body “problems” that other magazines airbrush out have been left in, so we see those full thighs, tummy rolls and muffin tops in all their peachy glory.
Solve said: “I loved the opportunity to show that you can be beautiful and sexy outside the narrow interpretations that normally define us.”
The same issue sees size-16 model Crystal Renn posing alongside slender, size-6 catwalk model Jacquelyn Jablonski, both wearing the same designer pieces.
poses next to Crystal Renn for V
The message from V magazine is clear: Fashion can – and should – flatter ANY figure. Crystal, 29, looks healthy and stunning next to 17-year-old Jacquelyn.
But the interesting thing about 23-year-old Crystal is that she has not always had her 36-31-41 shape.
I interviewed her two years ago when she landed the contract with High Street chain Evans and she was brutally honest about her life pre-plus size.
Aged 16, she was a size-6 model who, she revealed, barely ate, exercised excessively, did not have periods and fainted if she walked too far.
So she decided to stop dieting to see what her body was meant to truly look like.
And months later her career took off when Anna Wintour, notorious editor of US Vogue, put Crystal’s size-16 bod on the pages of their own “shape” issue.
Last year, American Glamour magazine published an unretouched photograph of model Lizzie Miller, who posed in the nude to reveal a very un-model-like roll of fat around her middle.
Even London Fashion Week got in on the act last September, when designer Mark Fast introduced size 12-14 models Hayley Morley, Laura Catterall and Gwyneth Harrison in his skimpy, fitted knitwear.
His stylist Erika Kurihara allegedly walked out over the decision to use the bigger girls.
But the models in question proved how sexy the clingy knitted dresses could look on a curvaceous body and they instantly sold out.
With almost half of British women around the size 16 mark, most of us – let’s be honest – would kill to look like these women.
So why does the fashion industry make it such an event when “real” sizes are celebrated?
Women WANT to see how the latest fitted dress will look on someone who represents “us”, or whether THAT kind of cropped jacket will work with wider shoulders or huge boobs.
With Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld still proclaiming that “no one wants to see curvy women” it seems we still have a long way to go.
Especially when the rest of the fashion world are holding up their own version of “plus-size” as the poster girl for 2010.
Gap-toothed Dutch model Lara Stone, girlfriend of Little Britain funnyman David Walliams, has become a soaraway success after taking over the Calvin Klein jeans campaign from Kate Moss. At a UK size 8, she is almost two dress sizes bigger than the usual catwalk models.
And she is being heralded as fashion’s new “curvy” it-girl.
Even Lara, 26, has said: “A lot of people say it’s nice to see someone who won’t break in half when you touch them.
“But I am still a woman and a person, and if you’re compared and confronted with your colleagues, and they’re all half your size, you think, ‘F***, I’m really fat!’ ”
But she told British Vogue that she IS a real woman, because she does not have the willpower to be ’super-skinny.’
Lara said, “If I could have the discipline to be super-skinny, I would be. I think of dieting, then I eat pizza. I’m a woman, and every woman wants to be skinnier – unfortunately.”
Women may want to be thinner but we are meant to have boobs and a booty – not starve ourselves to size zero proportions.
Flash(-ion) in the pan or the start of a real change? Who knows.
Style magazines positively celebrating how most women really look can only be a good thing.
If the clothes sell out when advertised by “bigger” women, surely it is just a question of time before retailers take the hint.
source:http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/fashion/2803890/Is-curvy-the-new-skinny-in-fashion.html
