The 'weird' fashion ideal Stacy London calls 'bullsh*t'
Fashion isn’t just for rich, skinny people.
That’s according to style expert Stacy London, who along with a panel of fashion-forward women spoke at theCURVYCon, a two-day, body-positive conference to celebrate size diversity in fashion. The event included a plus-size fashion show with models such as Liza Golden and WWE wrestler Nia Jax showing off new collections from designers Rachel Roy and Rebel Wilson and wrapped with an empowering conversation from some of fashion’s most influential names.
London aside, the panel included Fern Mallis, founder of New York Fashion Week and former executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Emme, who is considered the world’s first mainstream plus-size supermodel, Dia&Co co-founder Nadia Boujarwah, and plus-size model Marquita Pring.
When reflecting on her fashion journey, which began as a fashion editor at Vogue, London described her daily routine, saying, “All I did was dress six foot, double zero models. And that was really easy. It’s not really hard to put something on a pole and make it look like something.” She added, “But what I found was that very quickly, it didn’t satisfy me in the way that I was hoping that it would.”
The women also discussed the strides they were making in the plus-size world — Emme’s initiative Fashion Without Limits is reshaping fashion design courses at her alma mater, Syracuse University, Boujarwah’s company Dia & Co is a plus-size style subscription service, and Pring played a role in convincing her agency IMG to not segregate curvy models from their slimmer counterparts. And all the women shared their fashion evolution and their hopes for an inclusive future.
London also detailed her time as a stylist and host on the now-canceled show What Not to Wear, explaining that the program, which lasted 10 seasons, exposed her to varying body types and broadened her notion of style.
Her lesson straight from the fashion trenches: “There s a weird cultural idea that you have to be young, skinny and rich to look good in clothes, and that is bullsh*t.” Amen.
Day 2 of theCURVYcon is Saturday, September 9th. It will be live-streamed exclusively on Yahoo Style. Tune in here from 9:45am on.
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Day 2 of theCURVYcon is Saturday, September 9th. It will be live-streamed exclusively on Yahoo Style. Tune in here from 9:45am to 4pm on Saturday, September 9th.
