Attention — curves ahead
Three Canadian models embody commercial breakthrough as plus sizes join ‘regular’ racks
Throwing size zero a curve, the three models gathered at the B&M agency at King St. W. and Bathurst St. are the among the new faces — and shapes — of modern fashion in Canada. Meet Meredith Shaw, Sarah De Melo and Karyn Inder.
Amplified by social media, they are impassioned voices of body positivity, helping to translate the movement into a commercial breakthrough. There is even a new industry word in play: “curve” has become the sexy, new way of saying “plus size.”
In mid-August, fast-fashion mega-player Joe Fresh, introduced extended sizing with its fall lineup with selected “favourites” now available from size zero (XS) through to size 22 (3X). The initiative puts it in line with Old Navy and H&M, which both offer extended sizing, and join Suzy Shier and Reitmans, which now carry plus sizes, and longtime plus-size retailers Toniplus, and Reitmans-owned Penningtons and AdditionElle.
The good news here is that Joe Fresh’s selections are integrated into the “regular” store and not stuck off in a corner. The pricing is also consistent across sizing: to add insult to injury, plus-sized shoppers have traditionally had to pay more for less selection.
This is a market that is good and mad at its fashionable needs being ignored. Canadian figures haven’t been broken down, but as of 2012, 67 per cent of women in the United States were size 14 and up. As Iskra Lawrence, an American celebrity curve model put it in a Glamour posting the other week:
“Women want to shop at a brand that cares about diversity,” Lawrence says. “They don’t want to be sold products from brands preying on their insecurities. Consumers have power because they’re investing their dollars.”
It was just last year that supermodel Ashley Graham broke through to the covers of Sports Illustrated and British Vogue, followed by a group picture on American Vogue. Ironically, Alexandra Shulman, the 59year-old former editor who stepped down earlier this year from British Vogue, may have made her own biggest splash posting a bikini vacation selfie this summer. She earned rapturous applause on social media for exposing her own unvarnished reality after a quarter-century at the helm of the size zero bible.
Activists and advocacy groups such as Body Confidence Canada are making an impact promoting diversity and fighting discrimination of all appearance and identity aspects on social media, with government, in the arts with film festivals and awards and now in our schools.
Andrea Evans is the agency director for B&M, which has long been known as an agency committed to diversity in its roster, in age, size and ethnicity. As to the shift to broader sizing, Evans says requests started to come in from clients “about three years ago.
There are now a good list of Canadian fashion clients representing size diversity, as well as dedicated highfashion magazines focused on plus imagery, such as Toronto’s Dare. But the mainstream fashion magazines, the Flares, Elles and FASHIONs, aren’t there on fuller representation yet,” she says.
Karyn Inder (@karynindermodel), is originally from Newfoundland and Labrador. She came to Toronto in 2013 determined to model, thinking she would have to starve herself to fit into industry standard. Instead, she was told by her agency, B&M, that she was perfect the way she was: “You are beautiful, you are healthy and you represent so many women.” She is realistic about how far we still have to go: “There are no small steps with stuff like this. We still have to expand the definition of beauty to include race, ethnicity, disability. But when a client or a designer makes a choice to broaden their view of what is beautiful, it’s huge!”
And real women are listening. Fellow curve model Meredith Shaw (@meredithshawtoronto) reports being touched by the raw honesty and positivity of people who reach out to her as a role model: “If you see me crying in line at Starbucks, you know I’m checking my DMs,” she says. Shaw, who began her life in public as a singer-songwriter from age14, is now not just a curve model but also hosts a nightly show on ChumFM, and is a morning television style expert for Marilyn Dennis, The Social and Your Morning. “The cool thing is now that I’m a fashion authority, not just for plus sizes. People watching a curvier body doing something that perhaps felt exclusionary before. I’m not a gimmick or a token. I’m there because I know what I’m talking about!”
Shaw is also Canada’s first curve columnist, with a monthly gig at Canadian Living called We the Curvy. “This is an important fashion conversation,” she says. “Brands don’t extend sizes for the goodness of their hearts. It’s not kumbaya, it is dollars and cents.”
To Sarah De Melo (@sarahdxoxo), who works part-time in the legal field, body positivity means “When I was younger, we didn’t have any curvy role models, in magazines or media, we didn’t see people with similar bodies.”
So along with four other women, De Melo co-founded Canadian Curvies, which stands for “body positivity and diversity, self-love and confidence with a passion for fashion. Our mission is to inspire women and young girls everywhere to love their bodies just as they are, while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. We believe that beauty starts from the inside, and that confidence is the most beautiful thing a woman can wear.”
And coming from both sides of the size debate, Jess Lewis has been a model for 17 years. She began her career as a “straight” model at age 15; for the past six years or so, she has been on the curve roster, based in New York. Because of her unique perspective, she was approached by filmmaker Jenny McQuaile. Together they made Straight/Curve (Lewis was a producer and collaborator), a documentary that debuted in New York this past spring and is headed to Toronto in October (follow straightcurvefilm.com for updates). The film is “about this conversation to bolster the body positivity movement over- all, and highlight some of the leaders integrating this messaging into their publications and brands,” Lewis says.
Now back in Toronto, Lewis has become a diversity consultant to fashion businesses. “This conversation has been moving so quickly,” she says, adding that what started out as tokenism, a few curve models mixed into the runway lineup or advertisements, “can and is evolving into meaningful change. In the end, the underlying message is female empowerment, and there are elements everyone can relate to.”
The diversity battle is broader than sizeism. Jill Andrew is an academic, activist, writer and speaker focused on the issues of body image and appearance-based discrimination. Her life partner, and co-founder of Body Confidence Canada, is Aisha Fairclough, a television producer, body image advocate and diversity consultant. Together, they run the fatin- thecity.com blog, as “two Black and queer women” as a way to “include ourselves in the plus fashion blogging landscape, which was predominantly white and simply reinscribing Eurocentric beauty ideals all over again — only with bigger bodies.”
As to the Joe Fresh news, Andrew says, “Any move forward is one worth being recognized. Today’s fashion choices are more diverse than previous years. We’ve made some strides but all you have to do is walk into your mall or department store and you’ll see the lack of options for plussize consumers. Retailers such as Reitmans, Suzy Shier and now Joe Fresh have extended their sizes. We’re glad that retailers like Joe Fresh have begun to take notice but we deserve options everywhere! Not just in plus size boutiques but in every single store!” For a great guide to local fashion options (including vintage) for curve sizing, visit the Shop section at fatinthecity.com.
The runways may be the final frontier, Jess Lewis says. “And now we are starting to see designers — Christian Siriano, Chromat, Sophie Theallet in New York, Lesley Hampton in Toronto — sending curve girls down the runway.” In fact, for the fall 2017 NYC shows, a record total of 27 plus-sized models were included in the lineups. Lewis is working with Hampton to cast curve models in her upcoming show here.
The goal is to make diversity a permanent part of the esthetic landscape. And to make retail without size limits.
“The underlying message is female empowerment, and there are elements everyone can relate to.”
JESS LEWIS MODEL