“We would love for you to attend our fashion month show.”

Me: “Are you providing dressing options?”

“Nothing in your size, sadly, but we do have these really fun earrings!”

In 2019, this was a common conversation I had with many London Fashion Week shows. It became rather tedious and honestly quite offensive.

For many years, as a plus-size woman, I’d been made to feel grateful to even be invited to these fashion month shows because, quite frankly, I didn’t have the acceptable ‘fashion-worthy body’ that’s so prevalent in the fashion industry – even though I had nearly a decade’s worth of high-end fashion editorials, billboards, beauty campaigns and articles under my name. My size was definitely still an issue. Plus-size models were definitely still an issue.

For the last two years I have been recording how many curve or plus size models walk down the runway across the four main fashion weeks and looking into whether any social trends or headlines have been able to alter and manipulate the numbers across the board dramatically.

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK

Earlier this year we had the rise of the ‘ozempic’ trend coming from the USA and I believe that the impact of this alongside the terms ‘heroin chic’ and ‘skinny is back in’ did alter the messaging at NYFW.

Usually they are the leaders when it comes to size inclusivity on the runway, but in February 2023 the big apple plummeted from being the leaders to coming third place with only 31 models to the previous 49 models the season prior.

With over 96 designers showing this season, with an average of 40 looks per show, there were around 3840 looks paraded down the runway by models.

70 of them were considered curve or plus.

I think the amount of backlash that was received could have got NYFW to switch their game up this season, fingers crossed.

The stand out show was Selkie, who captured the essence of inclusivity perfectly in their beautiful performance led catwalk while Collina Strada, Parsons MFA and Christian Siriano all used a handful of beautiful curve models proving that they weren’t doing it as a gimmick.

LONDON FASHION WEEK

With over 75 designers showing this season  with an average of 34 looks per show there were around 2625 looks paraded down the runway by models.