"Who wants to see a round person anyway"- Karl Lagerfeld
Designer Julian McDonald and Karl Lagerfeld (yes-this is really the only picture of good ol' Karl I could find, no alternative motives in hand...)
Wow, this debate is so insane to me! And I bet you think it’s because I agree with Karl Lagerfeld on saying “who wants to see a round person anyway” or designer Julian McDonalds' lash out on plus-size models during an interview regarding his show "Britain's Top Model."- but no. I myself am not only round, but if you poke the left side of my stomach, the right side pops out. Not really though, but you get my point.
Mr McDonald went on and told Wales according to the Daily Mail:"This is a serious show. A catwalk model is a size six to eight. You can’t have a plus size girl winning – it makes it a joke."
Now, i could obviously go on and talk about the fact that sizes above eight is still beautiful and that normal women can't fit into a size 4 anyway- but seriously, that goes with out saying to me. I don't think anyone here needs the get enlightened on that part. But there is another angle that does bother me, and it is the fact that just talking about and supporting/not supporting this subject has turned into the biggest trend of our time. A subject is now a trend and not a design itself. Not a designer of an extraordinary garment. No, just the subject.
Mark Fast spring/summer 2010
Mark Fast is ten times more famous today then before London Fashion week Spring 2010. Not necessarily for the design of his clothes themselves, but because they were made for above size 8 models. Since when is it ok to have your garments plasters in all media of the world, because you had an opinion? The craft is to design; not to shift media focus during the most important week to any designer. I do not know if Fasts’ intensions were pure or not, and it is irrelevant to me. Either way, this is no better then what Ungaro did with the LindsayLohan stunt. They knew the media was going to write about it, and it never mattered if it would be in a positive way or negative way. Their name and design was everywhere, and the media sucked into it.
My point is: in the fashion industry- why do we have such a need to label everything outside of their objections? Stella McCartney for instance, can never shed the “animal rights and vegetarian designer” title, even though she told the Observer last October that this is completely misguiding to her wishes. She explained that when the media constantly emphasizes on her using green material and never fur, they make it into an extraordinary thing instead of what it is to her as a designer: normal. She would never do it in any other way. I could not agree with her more, so every time I read about a plus size model I quench. Not because she is “plus-size” of course, but because the words “plus-size” is always connected to the word model. Caroline Trentini is never referred to as a normal sized model? Every time an extra adjectives is added to anything, the reader will see it as extraordinary or ‘not normal’. So when the name of a model, that appears healthy and skinny to a reader, is paired up with the “plus-size model” label it almost fools the eyes to see excess fat where there is none.
Models like Crystal Renn and Coco Rocha have recently spoken out against the anorexic look that has
become the industry standard. "The fashion world needs to change," Renn told the Independent. "Women on the street don't relate to all this talk of plus sizes, and it creates an 'us and them' mentality, which leads to comments like the ones Julien Macdonald has made." And I cannot agree with Miss Renn more. So In the end, yes, it would be a joke if a plus size model won Britain Top Model; it would be a joke if they labeled her as anything else then a model-PERIOD.
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