Sorry I haven’t had time to weight back in!
Rachylou, I agree that her point about NYFW feeling less and less relevant is well-articulated. And here’s the thing: fashion as a whole is rendering itself less relevant by refusing to cater to and market to the MAJORITY of American women. Is it any wonder we’ve seen this shift towards personal style/individual interpretations? Most women can’t replicate catwalk looks because the items on display simply aren’t available in their sizes.
Ryce, I agree that it’s astonishing that there are so few companies are even remotely interested in trying to engage a really enormous, untapped market. I think what the first article highlighted, for me, is that while there are a handful of designers out there, there just aren’t many innovators. I think the first person to come out with a truly contemporary-looking, innovative, wearable line of clothes with a size 16 at the CORE of their line, not the fringes, will be seen by history as THE fashion innovator of the 21st century.
I read the second article, which I think the first article links. What got me (as a politics person — I’m much more fluent in politics than in fashion), is that I think the first article’s analysis is actually MORE political than the write-up in the Daily Beast. The DB article makes the mistake of conflating tokenism (“Oh, boy, one show with plus-sized models!”) with representation (ex: plus-sized models side by side with straight models wearing clothes from the same designers).
As for invoking the current administration — I think we’re at a moment in history when politics sells, perhaps bigger $ than fashion. Clickbait will be clickbait. I suspect Torrid’s reasons for the show had less to do with sticking it to the man and more to do with making a profit (unless they made a statement indicating otherwise and I missed it?), so trying to draw a connection with the current political climate felt like a bit of a reach.
And Angie, I’m with you that it’s not Torrid’s fault — they’re just doing what they do (although maybe not quite as savvily as they could), and moreover it sounds like their show made a lot of people feel happy and more included -- although it sounds like others felt more marginalized by the experience. But even if the show was a net positive, it gives us a way of talking about a problem deeply embedded in our culture, a culture which continues to say that people (women in particular), over a certain weight, no longer deserve nice things, no longer deserve choice; the fashion industry is one a manifestation of a widespread mentality. I could go on and on about the politics behind size-ism, but this is a style forum, so I won’t
