Plus Sized Wars, Channel 4 - TV review: Drop-dead gorgeous size 24-model Tess shows that big really is beautiful
Tess effortlessly exposed just how embarrassingly behind the times mainstream fashion is
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Your support makes all the difference.At the centre of Plus Sized Wars, Channel 4's optimistic documentary on changing beauty standards, was a group of confident, attractive women, ranging in dress size from a 16 to a 24. These fashion bloggers claimed to represent a significant group of British women who are being ignored by high street retailers, and their huge Instagram followings were the compelling proof. So why is the industry lagging so far behind what customers want?
Brands like Evans (formerly Evans Outsize) are at least trying to catch up. Once associated with "plump and lovely" middle-aged mums, they're now keen to cater to a growing demographic of fashion-conscious young women. Their competitors include Taking Shape, an Australian brand that's recently opened up UK stores selling "Easy-Breezy" undergarments to stop thicker thighs rubbing together and Peterborough-based Yours, whose stores boast wider-than-average fitting rooms. Yours' biggest coup, however, was their "new face", the American model and size 24 sensation Tess Holliday.
Tess is an idol to women all over the world and her look was so undeniably gorgeous – because of her size, not despite it – that she effortlessly exposed just how embarrassingly behind the times mainstream fashion is. The modelling agency Milk's plus-size division might sign girls up to a slightly curvy size 16 but its head, Anna Shillinglaw, was evidently still in thrall to the same set of strict beauty standards. Both she and the Yours CEO, Andrew Killingsworth, had been taken by surprise by social media's "body positive" movement and struggled when asked if their businesses were guilty of "normalising obesity".
The honest answer might be that fat models are no more or less healthy than the usual super-skinny ones. Fashion never was about promoting health; it's always been about flogging clothes. These days, however, there's no denying that big and beautiful is a market force to be reckoned with.
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