Fashion For All?
Brands are slowly making high-end fashion more inclusive.
Growing up, I couldn’t walk into most clothing stores and just buy clothes. I’d follow my older sisters around a store and watch them pick up hanger after hanger of beautiful dresses and shirts and I would look around at the pictures on the walls of models and wonder why none of then looked like me. Every single model was thin and white– nothing like my bigger-size, brown body. I would wander the aisles of Hollister and wonder why none of the clothes came in my size. The message became clear, these brands didn’t make clothes for people my size.
The average size for women in the United States is between a size 14 to an 18, which is considered plus-sized for many fashion brands. During its fashion weeks, the fashion industry sets the standard for trends throughout the year and by not showcasing models of all sizes a lack of inclusivity is normalized, one that trickles down from couture to everyday brands.
Every year, The Fashion Spot puts together a comprehensive report of diversity and inclusion metrics of New York Fashion Week. This Spring, plus-size models accounted for 5.09% of total castings. A startling statistic, but one that is nothing new to the fashion industry. Body inclusivity in the fashion industry has always been lacking, and that is slowly changing.
For years, the fashion industry has been known for its strict body standards, with thinness being the ideal. In an article for The Guardian, Kristie Clements, a former editor for Australian Vogue, blames the emphasis on thinness on designers and who they want to design clothes for. “For some bizarre reason, it seems [designers] prefer [then model] to be young, coltish, six-feet tall and built like a prepubescent boy,” she says. “[C]ollections are…worn by tall, pin-thin models because that’s the way the designer wants to see the clothes fall.”
The lack of inclusivity at fashion week can also be blamed on the fast- paced nature. Clothing is passed between models at shows, and models are expected to fit into a sample-sized garments. However, body inclusivity and garments fitting models of different sizes didn’t seem to be a problem for Ester Manas at Paris Fashion Week this year.
The young, Brussels-based brand is led by duo Ester Manas and Balthazar Delepierre, recent semifinalists for the LVMH Prize, a prestigious contest that awards up and coming fashion designers a 300,000 euro grant and a year of mentoring to help them launch their brand. LVMH is the parent company of luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Givenchy, and Christian Dior.
The brand was commended for its innovation in sizing, as their clothing fits a model from approximately a size two to an 18 in American sizing. This was only the brand’s second runway show, and of the 29 looks they presented at Paris Fashion Week, less than a third of them were worn by thin models. The New York Times praised this inclusive feat as it didn’t feel extraordinary to have models of all sizes walk a major fashion runway. According to the Times, “The models — like women who buy clothes in the real world, like the audience watching the show — represented a wide range of sizes.”
The winner of last year’s LVMH Prize, S.S. Daley had several plus-sized models walk in their show at Paris Fashion Week this year, including 23-year old, London based model, James Corbin, who closed the show. Corbin was cast two days before the show and his garments were custom-made for his body in24 hours. “I often ask myself, am I asking for so much to be included in fashion?”, he said to Vogue about the casting process. “This experience showed me that if a designer wants to, they will. I’m not asking for so much — it’s a little more material.”
“I often ask myself, am I asking for so much to be included in fashion?”
Creating clothes for plus-sized bodies is often a heated debate, with one argument against being the cost to make them and the price of selling them. It is true that it costs more to make plus-size clothes because it requires more fabric, patterns and materials. Because they are more expensive to make, many companies choose to sell plus-size clothes at a higher price than straight-sized clothing, the industry term for the range typically sold stores, which is between size zero to a twelve.
A huge issue in the fashion industry is that many brands price plus-size clothing higher than straight-sized clothing in order to make a profit. According to an article for Vogue Business, Patrick Herning, the founder of website 11 Honoré, finds this practice absurd, as he feels pricing should remain consistent across all sizes.
“When we launched, it was incredibly important to me to have parity across sizing,” he says. “That customer is already marginalized… I’m not going to have one of my clients see a dress in Neiman Marcus, and it’s 30 per cent more on 11 Honoré.” Instead, 11 Honoré, chooses to charge a higher wholesale price for the plus size clothing they sell so that consumers won’t have to pay more due to their size.
A size eighteen is the bestselling size at 11 Honoré, showing that demand certainly doesn’t seem to be the issue when it comes to plus size clothing. Even LA-Based designer Juan Carlos Obando was surprised when he discovered that the cost of producing plus-size clothes were lower than expected. Plus sizes now make up over a fifth of his sales, and they are his fastest growing department. He wasn’t expecting his designs to be as popular in plus sizes, as his brand is known for its sultriness and high slit dresses. He refused to compromise his designs between sizes, something that brands do to hide a larger body. “I was not going to change the designs from a size 0 to a size 22,” he told Vogue. “If you’re size 22 and you want a slit [in your dress], you should have a slit.”
“If you’re size 22 and you want a slit [in your dress], you should have a slit.”
Call it an act of radical inclusivity, but brands like Ester Manas and Obando’s are not doing anything astonishing. It’s the bare minimum to include all sizes in a clothing brand. By including plus-size models and sizes in their brands, however, they are helping to slowly redefining the industry as we know it to reflect people as they are, not as some haute couture designers want them to be.
