Plus Size Fashion – Is This Trend To Stay?

One of the most interesting trends in the world of fashion is that there is increasing willingness to share space with plus sized models. There was a time when the entire fashion world revolved around skinny models. In fact, some of these models were actually emaciated. These skinny models were avidly embraced as role models by young people everywhere and they also served as guidelines for prevailing standards of beauty. However, women are increasingly unwilling to subscribe to these artificial and unrealistic standards of beauty and are looking for role models they can easily identify with.

There is a slow but inexorable trend towards plus size fashion since the industry has realized that big built people simply cannot be ignored. People are increasingly becoming larger as a result of changes in diet and lifestyle and it would be a major financial blunder to ignore this fact. As much as fashion designers would love to design clothes only for skinny women, the fact is that they need to sell clothes to larger women as well in order to keep money rolling it. The very fact that many department stores are buying mannequins that are no longer skinny (but not outright large) shows that there is slow change in people’s mindsets.

There have been a few women in the news these days who do not conform to the ‘acceptable’ standard of a skinny body. Christina Hendricks of Mad Men fame is a good example. The latest plus sized person to make waves is multi Grammy Award winner Adele. The English actress Kate Winslet has never tried to hide her generous curves in order to look fashionably skinny.

Many fashion houses have jumped on the plus size bandwagon and they feature models who are slightly larger than the norm. While these models are rarely truly large it is still a move in the right direction. There has also been a call to stop the hiring of models who are painfully thin because the industry does not want to be seen as promoting anorexia or cocaine chic.

It is very true that there are hardly any plus size role models for young people to look up to so that they do not feel unworthy or that they deserve to be called ‘fat’ or ‘lazy’. Even the attempts that the fashion industry is making to include people of all sizes smacks of tokenism instead of being a sincere effort to embrace diversity. Plus size women still have a tough time getting beautiful and sexy clothes to fit them and they usually have to depend on a very small number of retailers for the kind of clothes that they want to buy.

There is no doubt that plus size fashion is here to stay even though it is not as powerful as some people would like it to be. However, it does indicate that women are less willing to be tied down to certain dimensions so that they look acceptable to most people’s concept of beauty.