The Original Plus Size Model Returns to Change The Fashion World

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Any child of the nineties remembers when Emme, the first plus size model, broke out onto the scene. In an era that heralded the arrival of Cindy, Naomi, Christy, and Linda, she was an anomaly but no less beautiful. Her column for Mode magazine, about the trials and tribulations of plus size fashion, earned her a spot on People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” list not once, but twice. Over the years, she went on to battle lymphoma (which began her quest for green living), and also hosted a dating reality show for FOX entitled More to Love. 

Today Emme is back in the news for continuing her quest to bring high fashion options to the wonderfully curvy women of the world. She recently went back to Syracuse University (her alma matter) to establish “Fashion Without Limits”—a design contest in which students are invited to create a red-carpet dress for Emme. The model, 51, sat down with WWD to discuss this new initiative and share her thoughts on the current state of the industry. Here are the highlights.

On why designers are not paying attention to the full size market: 

Some 68 percent of the U.S. female population is size 12 and above. (about 108 million women). If you take 10 percent of that, it’s a pretty big market share. There’s a contemporary market and a young junior market that’s very big and not being addressed outside of mass. There are designers paying attention to it, [but] they’re just not the ones we see on a regular basis in the magazines. They’re not yet being funded fully or in department stores or opening their own stores.

On which designers are doing it well:

Designers that are in place and in the fold in the fashion industry — outside of Michael Michael Kors, which has expanded its business to plus size and is doing very well in that — [include] Lauren Ralph Lauren, who’s doing well. Jessica Simpson is not a designer, but she’s expanded into plus-size juniors and is doing very well at Macy’s. Calvin Klein is killing it — these are their better lines. I’m doing appearances with Macy’s this fall, and they have beautiful things you wouldn’t have seen 10 to 15 years ago.

On how Europeans are more plus size friendly: 

It’s always been this way. With age and beauty, it’s much less under a microscope in Europe. They don’t Photoshop as intensely as we do in the U.S. I never noticed it was that bad, [but] you…start to travel and you look at the imagery over there. You’ll see fine lines, and you’ll see teeth not being overly white. You’ll see the natural essence of that woman coming out. You’ll see a little bit of age, and you’ll see women who are not size zero. You don’t see a lot of size-zero imagery in Europe.…

On shopping for plus size clothing today: 

You can’t imagine how hard it is for me. I can’t go into most of the stores. I once took a camera crew with “20/20,” and [the shopkeepers] said, “You can go over to the basement of Bloomingdale’s or Macy’s at Herald Square.” They told me, point-blank, “No, we don’t have it here.” Even at the top of my career, I had designers making me one-offs.