For those who went mad making the rounds at NYFW — and those spinning around town this week for LFW: You’re doing it wrong. At least according to Lizzie Widdicombe, who waxes poetic about how much more awesome Full Figured Fashion Week is than anything that’s going on this month. In an article for The New Yorker, Widdicombe goes inside the changing, blogger-driven plus-sized fashion industry, and from her recounting of Full Figured Fashion Week, the plus-sized community sounds pretty awesome. In Widdicombe’s words, “For anyone accustomed to navigating the anxious crowds at uptown Fashion Week, Full Figured Fashion Week can feel like passing from a land of famine into one of plenty.”
Though the plus-sized industry still faces a lot of challenges (even high-end labels like MICHAEL Michael Kors, which has great plus-sized options, won’t give samples to plus-sized focused publications), it’s clear that the world seems a lot friendlier and more positive than what we’ve come to know of the straight-sized industry. Here are five examples.
1. Everyone seems to be having fun in the FROW: Widdicombe recounts a very revealing dress she saw on the runway: “Then a model came down the runway wearing a skintight leopard-print dress with a V neck and a scandalously high slit up the front. There were gasps from the audience as the model narrowed her eyes and strutted toward us. The editor whispered, ‘That is an air-your-coochie dress!'”
2. The scene is more racially diverse, and women of color are leading: “’In the black community, there’s always been a celebration and a recognition of the fact that black women have thick, curvy bodies,’ Tanisha Ford, a professor of women, gender, and sexuality at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told me. ‘For me, it’s no shocker that black women would be leading the charge toward full-figured fashion,’ Ford said. ‘Black people have always used clothing as a form of resistance.'”
3. There is a feeling of big-girl pride and solidarity: A runway show featured a spoken-word poet who preformed a sermon-style piece on the runway. “‘On the eighth day, God created thickness and saw that it was good!’; ‘Stop asking me if those jeans make your butt look big. No. Your butt makes your butt look big! And I love every inch of it’; and ‘I like my women the way I like my pancakes: hot, fluffy, and stacked!'”
“The lights went up, and the m.c. told us to greet one another,” Widdicombe recounted. “‘Turn to your neighbor and say, Girlfriend, you are beautiful!'” We think NYFW would be a better place if we all did that once in a while!
4. It is not short on fashion: One showgoer notes that “people have been plotting their outfits all year.”
5. CREAM CHEESE STUFFED STRAWBERRIES: This was a menu item at a fashion presentation. Something for straight-sized designers to consider for their hors d’oeuvres next season (we beg you).
[via The New Yorker]
