Fat Anna Wintour’s Fashion Squeeze: Curves Are In, Curvy Girls Are Out

Words: Anastasia Vartanian

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Fashion loves a contradiction. Rihanna as a sexy nun. Balenciaga’s £900 Tesco bags. Here’s the latest one: the runway loves curves, but not on plus-size women. Size inclusivity in fashion was on a general upward trend since the mid 2010s, in tandem with the body positivity movement. For spring 2021, Versace featured its first mid- and plus-size models on the runway – three of them in fact! Things were finally changing, people wrote optimistically.

Then, around 2023, people started reporting on fashion’s diversity backtrack. Where were all the plus-size models? Was it just a weak season, or the beginning of a trend? Each subsequent season, Vogue Business’ size inclusivity report yielded depressing results.

Fast-forward to the recent Paris couture shows, which were a love letter to curvy silhouettes. Wide hips and panniers featured at Alessandro Michele’s Valentino debut. Schiaparelli showed off intense corsetry. The stand-out look of the show, worn by Kendall Jenner, looked like a perfume bottle come to life. It’s a silhouette that would be impossible without fashion tricks like corsetry and padding. But among all this engineering to accentuate the curves of a woman, plus-size models were almost nowhere to be found. 

You could argue that couture doesn’t have to reflect the average woman. It’s art! It's not meant to be worn by anyone but models, celebrities, and a select few clients with deep, deep pockets. (Said clients even get the garments altered to suit their own tastes.) But, I’d argue that couture has never had so many eyes on it as it does now, with the rise of fashion as social media fodder. 

Couture sets standards for what “high fashion” is. The defining fashion moment of 2024, for instance, was John Galliano’s final Margiela show. Again, the silhouettes were hourglass to the extreme: corseted waists juxtaposed with voluptuous hip pads, in a nod to the Edwardian Gibson Girl silhouette. The show featured some models beyond straight-size, including actress Gwendoline Christie, but to call any of them plus-size would be a stretch. When the show prominently featured wide, round hips, it has to be asked: why not cast someone who is naturally built like that, rather than using pads that would make a drag queen proud?

Fake curves are obviously easier to control. They go in and out exactly where necessary. And this element of control is an important one when it comes to a designer’s creative vision. It’s no secret that many designers – and artists in general – can be control freaks when it comes to their art. There’s a telling passage in Dana Thomas’ Galliano-McQueen biography, Gods and Kings, where a young Galliano sheepishly admits to not liking boobs because they “spoil the line.”

“Weight loss fads are nothing new, and arguably being thin never went out of style, but it’s very interesting that in a post-body positivity culture, the pursuit of thinness could be so blatant and widespread.”

Indeed, some designers seem less preoccupied with dressing a woman’s body, and more with expressing themselves. The models are their canvas. Could this attitude – seeing women’s natural curves as an obstacle to creativity, rather than an important element in the design process – partly be a result of not enough women in fashion’s top roles? 

Much of the fashion paraded down the runway by women is designed by men. It tends to be emerging female designers who cast the most size-diverse runways. Karoline Vitto, Ester Manas, Kimberley Gordon (of Selkie), Ellie Misner, Di Petsa and Chopova Lowena are just a few. Their clothes feature an innate understanding of what it’s like to dress as a woman: many pieces are adjustable or stretchy, since a menstruating woman’s body fluctuates throughout a single month. Even Vivienne Westwood, whose corsets are a signature piece and instrumental in the recent corset revival, are more about framing the bust rather than rigidly constricting the waist.

Dressing bigger bodies provides logistical issues for some designers: it’s not as simple as taking a straight-size pattern and adding a few inches everywhere. There’s more variation in bust/waist/hip proportions among curvier women. This makes it tricky when you don’t know exactly which model will be wearing your clothes on the day of the show (which is why sample size is a thing in the first place.) Essentially, it takes more effort, because it’s a different way of working. This separates the brands which cast the occasional plus-size model in a stretchy dress from the ones that have always and will continue to dress bigger bodies, because it’s part of their DNA.

But it’s not just about the designer’s creative process, is it? Because this shift towards thinness is apparent in wider culture too. In the era of weight loss medications like Ozempic, you can buy being thin. Its use is apparently widespread in entertainment industries. Many celebrities have significantly slimmed down in the past year or so. Weight loss fads are nothing new, and arguably being thin never went out of style, but it’s very interesting that in a post-body positivity culture, the pursuit of thinness could be so blatant and widespread.

Cultural pendulums always swing, and recently it’s been swinging away from diversity. There’s the very literal removal of DEI programs by President Trump. But there’s also been more subtle changes in fashion over the past few years. On TikTok’s high fashion corner, people romanticise the shows (but more so the models) of the 2000s and early 2010s. It was an era of very white, very thin casting, even by fashion’s standards. Svelte, Slavic women like Snejana Onopka and Vlada Roslyakova are the patron saints of this movement on TikTok, just like they were in Tumblr’s fashion sphere a decade ago. (In fact, it all feels very pro-ana Tumblr: a photo of Kate Moss smoking a cigarette, overlaid with the quote, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”)

Fashion trends for the past few years have also favoured these eras: the midriff-baring noughties, and, more recently, the indie sleaze style of the 2010s and its defining garment, skinny jeans. The fixation on these eras has rubbed off on body ideals. On the runway, not only are there fewer mid- and plus-size models, even the straight-size models are looking thinner.

We also, regretfully, have to talk about the Victoria’s Secret debacle. Its famous show was cancelled in 2019 as a result of declining viewership and public backlash to fatphobic and transphobic comments by an executive. In 2023, the show returned from its hiatus, but with a twist. Rather than a runway, it was a documentary with costumes made by 20 emerging designers from 4 cities: London, Lagos, Tokyo and Bogotá. The models were diverse, independent designers were getting a spotlight (and a cheque!)… But it bombed. Why?

It was painfully transparent that the brand was trying to make up for its past and replicate the success of Savage x Fenty. But VS has never been about breaking the boundaries of beauty, quite the opposite. So commissioning subversive designers like Michaela Stark (who is known for her body-morphing corsetry that highlights less acceptable parts of a woman’s body) was never going to feel anything but performative. The public backlash to the show was intense, and some blamed “woke-ness” for ruining the lingerie show. It’s a shame, because it was poor manoeuvring on the company’s part, rather than the fault of the designers or models. (I would also argue that they misread their audience. Anyone who was still interested in Victoria’s Secret in 2023 didn’t care about diversity – or, they were simply nursing their nostalgia.)

In the face of all this, it seems like fashion has quietly let out a sigh of relief. Diversity is not only no longer on the agenda, it’s sometimes been blamed for getting in the way of a good show. Without the pressure of the body positivity movement, why bother casting plus-size models? This is why I was never that excited when mainstream brands cast one bigger model in a stretchy dress. It was low-effort, and reeked of tokenism.

But back to hyper-cinched, hyper-padded silhouettes. As a fashion fan, I’m conflicted. I love the drama of exaggeration: the waspish waists and broad shoulders of 80s and 90s Thierry Mugler. It’s the blurred line between fashion and art: should it have to reflect the average woman’s body? But, at the same time, is it not possible to create stunning fashion moments without constricting a woman’s waist, over 100 years since the corset fell out of widespread use? What’s more, when wide hips are trending, but plus-size models are nowhere to be seen, it sends a message: We want curves, but not yours.