In addition, fashion isn't quite exempt, but it's the mainstream, "regular" brands that may have the most power, not the ones at Fashion Week. Having that in the social sphere is going to be much more influential." "Having Brittany Howard out there and being a bonafide rockstar and having people not say, 'Oh, she's a fat girl and a rock star' is what matters. "I think it's not being done on the runway," Miller continued. Change may be more possible when women like Howard are celebrated - or, say, when women like Rebel Wilson and Melissa McCarthy land on the covers of fashion magazines or on best-dressed lists. That means popular culture, for starters. Making change where people are looking: "Having a fat, stylish woman owning it and owning her right to be in the world is probably going to legitimize fat fashion more than a one-off in a fashion show," Miller said. Runways are, simply, not where change is going to take place. Instead, we can re-shift our gaze to more accessible places, the places that communicate what a "normal" body looks like and what clothing should be out there. If we're talking about plus-size visibility creating change, it may be time to reconsider that high fashion is the root of all of our problems. Plus - newsflash - most of the general population probably doesn't see the fashion shows at all. We might expect the Michael Kors show to include lots of jeans, since that's what more people buy, and for Chanel to focus mainly on the lower-priced makeup we actually buy, versus the gowns we could never afford. If fashion shows were about reflecting reality, then we might expect Old Navy and Gap to stage Fashion Week shows. "Fashion is not about normalcy and they're not going to be bucking this fashionable ideal," Miller told Mic rather bluntly.īy its very nature, the clothing of runway shows are a heightened version of style, the kind of aspirational fantasies worthy of their own shows. High fashion's resistance to "normal": According to Miller, to change plus-size fashion and increase the overall inclusion of plus-size women, we shouldn't be looking to the runways or high fashion at all. But as Miller told Mic in an interview ahead of Fashion Week, if we want actual change for plus-size shoppers, we're training our focus on the wrong place. We take the data, we make the charts, praise the change-makers and shame the excluders. The kickoff of New York Fashion Week today will invite the inevitable scrutiny of plus-size representation. It's something Miller predicted in 2013 when she told Refinery29, "We might have a movement that we can roll with. "Plus-size" clothes are still so uncool and untrendy that young women have shunned the label, preferring the less dated (and more accurate) word " curve." Size 14 shoppers must still shop mostly online, since their clothes aren't actually in stores. Magazines are filled front to back with size 2 models. Yes, there is a growing social media movement around body positivity, and a number of "plus-size models" like Ashley Graham are gaining notice, even by traditional outlets like Sports Illustrated.īut plus-size clothing, even though it's worth a reported $17.5 billion, is still a relatively untapped market by major designers. In the two or so years since Miller's show, the middling state of clothing for curvier women, not to mention their representation in fashion and media, hasn't improved much. Naturally, after models who were a size 12 or higher strutted down the runway in Miller's original designs, which consisted of patterned dresses and knee-length skirts, the show received international press, praise and all the hype you could imagine.īut then, nothing really happened.
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