Sunday 20 September 2009

Plus Sized Models Cause Walk Out at London Fashion Week

[caption id="attachment_89" align="aligncenter" width="168" caption="Plus Sized Models on Catwalk at LFW"]Plus Sized Models on Catwalk at LFW[/caption]

This week is London fashion week, and imagine the surprise that plus sized models have been spied gracing the catwalk showing Mark Fast’s collection.

Apparently the girls were friends of the designer, and had inspired the collection so were put on the runway. Even if it may only be by connection, nonetheless models who weren’t a size 4 or 6 or less were on the catwalk during London fashion week, with the world’s eyes upon them, and that can only be a good thing in my eyes!

However, Fast’s decision to use plus sized models didn’t go down well with everyone. According to the Daily Mail after “creative differences” arouse over the use of the fuller figured models, the stylist and creative director of the collection walked out just three days before the event, leaving Fast in an awkward position.

Fortunately, two freelancers came in to save the day and made sure the show went on without a hitch. I’ve got to say I respect Fast’s decision to stick to his guns and keep the curvier models in his show. Putting them there demonstrated that his clothes aren’t just for the slimmer models but can be worn by bigger women as well, which would have done him a world of favours, as opposed to buckling under the pressure to only use exclusively slimmer models.

[caption id="attachment_90" align="aligncenter" width="168" caption="Plus sized model on catwalk at LFW"]Plus sized model on catwalk at LFW[/caption]

So is this a sign of what’s to come? Fast has been working with Caryn Franklin, (presenter of The Clothes Show back in the nineties) on a project which intends to encourage designers to produce clothes and styles which suit different sized women, as opposed to the straight up straight down girls you universally see on the runway.

With support from designers such as Hannah Marshal, David Koma and Cooperative Designs, hopefully this initiative will bring about a flurry of plus sized models, and I hesitate to say plus because they mustn’t be any bigger than a size 14. But never the less, anything more normal and realistic than the current clothes horses will be an improvement.

Although designers argue that clothes hang better off skinnier models than they do on more curvaceous ones, this cannot be true for all clothes. And in half of the cases the opposite will be true. Some dresses need curves to cling to; others don’t, and if the people who will eventually be buying these gowns aren’t all the same size as the models, why not cater to the majority of women out there who are a little larger?

1 comment:

  1. [...] who were featured in Glamour magazine, as well as Hayley Morley and Laura Catteral who caused that furore when they walked for Mark Fast a while back. So even if the high end catwalks aren’t taking plus sized shapes into account, at [...]

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