Last month was fashion season – and quite apart from the Plus Size Fashion Weekend in London which didn’t seem to get as much attention as plus size fashionistas might have hoped, there were two attempts from fashion houses to present ‘real women’ in their catwalk shows.
At Paris Fashion Week, Rick Owens used ‘real women’ alongside professional models, and by real we don’t mean slightly bigger than a size 6, we actually mean women who just aren’t models! The idea of presenting his high-end fashion on non-model women was undoubtedly to show mere mortals how we’d look in his designs. I didn’t notice anything plus size, though. Rick may just be too edgy to include plus size women in his definition of ‘real’.
Donna Karan’s DKNY show in New York was also noted for using real women – but of course, DKNY isn’t the posh Donna Karan line, it’s the diffusion line that’s marketed at people who want Donna Karan clothes but aren’t made of money.
So, who is making the statement? According to the media, Rick Owens, who isn’t widely known outside of fashion circles, was being more provocative because his clothes are more expensive and therefore not REALLY intended for us mere mortals. The DKNY show was just an attempt to sell more mid-priced designer clothes to people who can’t afford the real thing. That makes me cross – are the fashionistas saying that real women don’t wear designer clothes? That they should be confined to those of us lucky enough to be blessed with a bank balance in reverse proportion to our dress size?
Last season, Owens also courted media attention by using predominantly black models, although it still amazes me that using a ‘model of colour’ is considered in any way edgy considering that the UKs most glamorous supermodel, the fantastic and divaesque Naomi Campbell first strutted nonchalantly down the catwalk around 25 years ago.
In last season’s shows, the models were mostly (fashion industry) plus-size models who replaced the sourpuss look beloved of the typical high fashion model with dancing, smiling and even stomping. This season seems to be a continuation of his attempts at challenging certain stereotypes, but I wonder, what point is he actually trying to make?