“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.
So, for the last three 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. Let’s look at this past fashion month’s credentials…
NEW YORK FASHION WEEK
The rise of the Ozempic trend in the US is still hanging around, three years since its first popularity – and it was quite apparent that the impact of this trend alongside the return of archaic phrases such as ‘heroin chic’ and ‘skinny is back’ hugely altered the messaging at NYFW back in 2022. After a lot of backlash, they more than doubled their numbers for curve models to 70 models later in that year, but their numbers have been decreasing ever since – averaging at around 40 models each season in 2024. Last Feb we saw a 50% drop and now the later part of 2025 we are back to our low average.
Gone are the days when the US were leaders when it comes to size inclusivity on the runway, so it is a real shame to see the big apple plummet back the past few years. Again in 2025, there was also no male plus-size representation, which is highly disappointing from the city that used to be the forefront of inclusion.
With over 117 designers showing this season and an average of 40 looks per show, there were around 4680 looks on the runways.
46 of them were considered curve or plus.
The designer loyally flying the flag for representation season after season is Christian Siriano, who cast eight plus-size girls on his runway this season. Jade Ward had four curve models, Michael Kors, Kim Shui, Bach Mai, Christian Cowan all had three models each.
Launchmetrics.com/spotlight
Felicity Hayward
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