I know nothing of Mark Fast’s work, but perusing his collection, his specialty seems to be in bodycon, baring minis. Something I’d never wear, of course, due to a pretty long history of body hangups (oh, the plight of the 5’8 size 4-6).
Anyway, although it looks like someone forgot to give them proper undergarments, it’s refreshing to see a dress hug a girl instead of hang off her. I’m not into the whole “size empowerment” thing; a skinny girl is just as much of a “real woman” as someone with curves, and body prejudices are downright insulting, whichever end of the spectrum. And sure, these models are “just like the rest of us” (if all of you are 5’10 hourglasses, of course).
The author raises a very important point: “One side-effect of having average-sized women on the catwalk was to emphasise just how thin some of the other models were.” I mean, unfortunately, this is fashion, where the model is the clichéd coathanger, where Lara Stone is praised/decried for having tits, where all the uproar over BMI and health in 2007 has really come to nothing. (And looking at NYFW, a lot of the top girls seem to have gotten thinner.) And to be honest, looking at the majority of these designs, they were clearly not made for plus-size girls. This model looks positively stunning, like that dress was made just for her. This one and this one, however, SCREAM “design afterthought.” They’re ill-fitting and unflattering, which is just rude to those models, turning them into a media-mongering spectacle. Whatever Fast’s intentions, he should have had the decency to dress them well.
Hilary makes a great point here, and one of the things which made me especially uncomfortable about what I basically think is Fast’s lil’ publicity stunt: it seems that he was intent on putting his “larger” models into the dresses from his collection which made it most obvious that he was using “plus size” models. These girls are still attractive, well-proportioned white women — and in better-fitting clothes, they would not have looked out of place at all on the runway, and many people probably would actually not have noticed their higher weight immediately. But by putting size D breasts into crochet tops better suited for a 32A and stretching yarn across 40” hips rather than 34” ones, he makes it grossly obvious that he is “trying to use ‘fat’ models” - and is just dying for all of us to sit around blogging about it and buy his dresses no matter what our size. (But, side note: at least we’re talking?)
This is precisely the kind of “plus size model fetishism” that I think is gross — it makes anyone deviating from 34-24-34 norm acceptable, but only as some sort of novelty, a spread in a “body positive” issue of a magazine, and an outlier for people to write articles about how “transgressive” their bodies are. It’s why, as Hilary points out, everyone is obsessed with Lara Stone’s tits: are they good? are they bad? is she fat? is she hot?
Clearly what “would be nice” is to see a variety of body types, races, genders, etc on every runway — the fact of the matter is that it just isn’t practical to book models of all sizes and shapes for your show and plan every look individually to flatter every different girl. (Though this doesn’t excuse magazines and lookbooks.) R29 wrote about recent general increases in runway diversity, as did Jezebel last season — probably largely publicity stunts, but will this lead to normalization of the “outlier”? And does this actually matter? I always feel like blaming fashion for body image issues and race issues and class issues and misogyny is a pathetic cop-out avoiding the real complexity of these matters.
And if we’re all about fashion for the “average healthy woman” then let’s see some size 8-10 5’5”s (but I mean, really, enough of deciding on what’s “average,” I don’t think I relate to the “average” woman and I doubt most other girls do either.) What is so great about average? We like and remember celebrities and models with personality and unusual folks (I still remember those Old Navy ads with Carrie Donovan); the fact of the matter is that on the runway it’s normalized to have the models be a certain ‘average’ so as to showcase the clothes + styling rather than their personality. So our complaint, really, is with that: the supposed focus on the clothes leads to the deletion of the woman they’re on (oh man, getting into too much body politics here) and in turn leads us to focus — and obsess, which I think is the worst problem — about those bodies, which I think is often more of a factor of general “female body self-consciousness” than “looking at skinny models” is.
Point is, Mark Fast, wouldn’t it be better PR for you to have us talking about your dresses instead?
