Fashion Week designers bring more diversity to the runway
One designer who is making strides in this department is Christian Siriano. The Annapolis native designer included five plus-size models in his New York Fashion Week show this past week, and more than a third of the 32 sent down the catwalk were models of color. While many praised this inclusion as a trailblazing statement in the world of fashion, Siriano didn’t intend to receive so much attention.
“I just wanted to have different sizes. That’s all it was. But it’s great that it made such an impact; that’s awesome. I’m glad people were excited. I really didn’t think people would even think about it!” Siriano told TODAY Style, at a launch event for his Lane Bryant collection in New York.
His latest collection for Lane Bryant, the designer’s second for the brand, offers sizes ranging from 14 to 28, and prices between $50 and $100.
The media also recently praised Siriano for dressing comedian Leslie Jones at a red carpet event, after she expressed in a tweet that other designers had refused to dress her.
Siriano wasn’t the only designer to employ a diverse cast of models for this year’s New York Fashion Week. For instance, both Archana Kochhar and Vaishali Couture included model Reshma Qureshi, who was the victim of an acid attack, in their shows. Stevie Boi featured a handful of transgender models, and H&M included a transgender model named Hari Nef, along with plus-sized model Paloma Elsesser and ’70s supermodel Lauren Hutton. Son Jang Wan’s fashion show featured 66-year-old African American supermodel Pat Cleveland, who closed out the show. Tracy Reese’s show celebrated women of all ages, races, and sizes, which was evident in her choice of models. Kenneth Cole’s fall campaign prominently featured model Lauren Wasser, who wears a prosthetic leg.
While fashion is not yet perfectly representative of people of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds, it is clear that designers are ensuring that the industry is headed toward a time when seeing diverse or plus-size models on the runway will not be front page news, but rather, will be the norm.
After all, as Siriano told The Baltimore Sun, “It is important to represent some diversity in the runway because that’s the world we live in, and that is what the customer is.”
