I remember writing a review of Project Catwalk during its first season and jokingly photoshopping a pair of devil horns onto Julien Macdonald’s head after he made one too many nasty comments about the contestants.

In early episodes of the show, it quickly became obvious that the Welsh designer was filling the Simon Cowell role in the show, a comedy villain who loved nothing more than tearing the contestants to shreds.

And it seems nothing changes. Madonald will soon return to our screens, this time judging models, not clothes, in a new series of Britain’s Next Top Model. And whilst the show has a new look and a new face at the helm – Elle Macpherson – one thing it will no doubt be recycling is Julien’s tendency to spout unnecessary vitriol.

This week’s gem? Well, apparently, “If you’re a size 14 in room full of size eights – you’re in the wrong room.”

It seems ‘larger’ women are the current target of the man behind many a skimpy little party dress. Wales Online spoke to the designer about the new series of Britain’s Next Top Model and asked him if plus size models would be given the opportunity to compete (following a win for a US size 12 model the American version of the show). His response?

“This is a serious show. You can’t have a plus size girl winning – it makes it a joke.”

Indeed. I know I laugh frequently at Crystal Renn, Hayley Morley and co. They’re just frickin’ hilarious. Also, I’ve seen BNTM and the one thing it’s not is serious!

Macdonald goes on to justify his comments by explaining that being a plus size girl in a skinny girl’s world is difficult. So we’re to believe he’s trying to save wannabe plus size models the embarassment and humiliation? I’m not convinced.

“It’s not fair on them – you’re setting them up for a fall – I know what would happen to them afterwards. They are looked down on, they’re frowned upon.”

Frowned upon by who? Not by the editors of US Glamour, French Vogue, Tush, V or any of the other magazines that have featured curvier girls in recent issues. Not by Mark Fast or Jean Paul Gaultier. Even Karl Lagerfeld, known for his hatred of ‘big’ girls, has begun to realise just how stunning more voluptuous women can be, using Crystal Renn as a model for Chanel and working on a plus size shoot for V.

Macdonald may pretend he’s doing girls a favour by sparing them the ‘pain’ later on. But what he’s really doing is pandering to a terrible part of the industry that makes any girl above a size 6 or 8 feel inferior and overweight. He’s making nasty, hurtful comments about women who don’t deserve it. By all means say “plus size girls have a tough time in an industry that traditionally favours slim models”, but to call the inclusion of a plus girl on BNTM a ‘joke’? To say they have no right to be in the same room as straight-sized models? For me, that’s taking it too far.

Surely a man who’s been vocal about banning women who’re underweight from the catwalk should know better than to attack the alternative – curvier, healthier women who look like they enjoy life. Most plus sized models aren’t even classified as overweight due to their height, so you can’t even use the ‘health’ argument. Bashing plus size models is just an easy bandwagon to jump on to get a few column inches.

When I read Macdonald’s comments, my thoughts soon turned to Debenhams, for whom he designs clothing, accessories and homeware under the ‘Star by Julien Macdonald’ label (see pictures).

Debenhams have – up until this point – really impressed me with their move towards a more inclusive approach to fashion. As a high street store, they cater to the size 14-16 average British woman, so it’s been a great initiative to trial size 16 mannequins in some stores, cut down on airbrushing and use models of all shapes and sizes in advertising campaigns. Making fashion accessible to the average shopper is a great move, and Debenhams are trailblazers.

So how would they react to one of their designers making such ill-advised comments about size 14 women (who, might I add, are not really plus size). I approached Debenhams for a comment, and sadly what I got was a bit of a cop-out.

“Julien Macdonald’s comments related to the fact that most sample sizes within the industry are a size 6 or 8 making it more difficult for plus size models. In fact, the Star by Julien Macdonald collection at Debenhams ranges from a size eight to size 20,” said Ruth Attridge, spokesperson for Debenhams.

Well, Macdonald may be happy to pocket the cash from sales of his high street range to larger women, but I refuse to believe he was just talking about sample sizes in those quotes. He was talking about there being no room for larger models next to slimmer ones – the exact thing Debenhams is working so hard to ensure!

However, “Debenhams continues to lead the way for inclusivity in fashion with our size 16 mannequin campaign and commitment to only using size eight and above models.” Attridge continues.

Perhaps they should start by giving Julien Macdonald a massive public slap on the wrists?

[via Fabsugar]

I was overwhelmed by the amazing response to my recent guest curator post on Etsy. Before listing my picks from the site, the team very kindly let me wax lyrical about Big Girls Browse and why I started it, and it was lovely to see some of the reactions from the Etsy community.

One comment in particular really stood out to me. Niftyknits said “I’ve been trying to pretend I’m still a UK14, not 16…but this gives me the courage to say heck – I’m a 16!!!”

I was so touched when I read that, because it sums up the exact reason I started this site. We live in a world where there’s so much stigma attached to a stupid number printed on a clothes label, and there shouldn’t be! Your dress size does not define who you are.

In my experience UK 16 (and sometimes even 14) seems to be a real trigger point for a lot of women. For many of my slimmer friends, it seems to be the unspoken barrier between being ok and being ‘fat’ (and I mean ‘fat’ the way an obviously not fat girl does when she turns to her friend and yelps “OMG I’m soooooo fat”). I don’t really know why this particular size has such bad connotations. Perhaps it’s because, for a long time, 16 was the biggest size a lot of shops sold, and the crossover to the plus size market.

Now that’s not so true. As a nation, we’re getting bigger. Size 16 is now the average. The likes of New Look, M&S, Next and George stock larger sizes as standard. Evans, meanwhile, starts at 14, not the 16 that most people assume.

My dress size has yo-yo’d between a 12 and 16 for all of my adult life. Over that time my body mass index (BMI) has been everywhere from 22 (healthy) to just under 28 (overweight). I have never been obese (a BMI of 30+) though I’m sure a fair few internet trolls would tell you otherwise if they saw a picture of me in a bikini.

My comfy weight (what model Crystal Renn refers to as the ’set point’ in her book) is around a size 14, with a BMI of 24. This is on the high end of the healthy range, but healthy all the same. At that weight, I can enjoy myself, have the odd treat and resist becoming the Crazy Diet Girl that I was at my slimmest. But I frequently go above that weight, and it really doesn’t make much of a difference. I don’t morph into a different person when I put on 5lbs.

I once put a picture of myself on a blog and stated my dress size in the accompanying post. I was a size 14 max at the time. One woman took no time in getting her claws out to comment “Size 18 more like!”

I was livid. How dare she? I was proud at that time to be maintaining a so-called healthy weight. The last thing I needed when I was actually making an effort was for some nasty little witch I’d never met to make me feel bad about myself.

But then I thought about it, and I decided that by being pissed off, I was just as bad as this woman. I was letting dress size rule my life. Who cares if I was a size 18? IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER. The only thing I had any right to be upset about was the fact she thought I’d felt the need to lie about it!

The label in your clothing means nothing. It’s taken me a long time to realise that. There’s no magic change when you go up a size. You don’t suddenly become a heifer overnight. It’s just a number.

Two women can wear the same dress size and look completely different. Height, body shape, muscle mass, waist-to-hip ratio, even the size of your boobs can contribute to what dress size you wear. The BMI scale (which dictates that a woman of average height, were she a size 16, would probably be slightly overweight) doesn’t take into account the fact muscle weighs more than fat, or the fact that big breasts aren’t a choice. It also doesn’t take into account the reasons women are the size they are; from lifestyle to genetics to the medication they’re on (including, of course, the contraceptive pill). One woman’s 12 is another’s 22. It doesn’t matter what the label says as long as you’re happy.

More importantly, and the point I was trying to make when mentioning the comment that woman made, is that size is in the eye of the beholder. Unfortunately, there are some people who will always look at women and see fatties, whether they’re size 12, 16 or 26. But there are just as many others who’ll look at a size 16+ and see a voluptuous, sexy woman who’s got better things to do than obsess over the label in her jeans. And that is a very attractive thing indeed.

If, with this site, I can make just one or two women of a similar size to me feel better about their bodies, then I’m happy. I’ve come to terms with the fact I wasn’t built to be super-slim, and I’m concentrating on being happy and having a healthy attitude towards my size instead.

And the happiest, healthiest people are the ones who don’t obsess, or care, what a label says!

Karl Lagerfeld has once again conveniently forgotten that he used to be fat and decided to moan about the use of normal women in magazines. “No one wants to see curvy women,” said the designer, on hearing the news that Brigitte, one of Germany’s top-selling magazines, was making a move to include ‘real’ women on its pages rather than professional models. This isn’t the first time the Kaiser has whined about bigger women, either. When he created a line for H&M, he complained about his clothes being made up to a size 16, stating he designed only for slim women. Well, Karl, we seem to remember you cosying up to Beth Ditto at one of your shows not so long ago…

So where to begin addressing this pile of nonsense?

Firstly, and most importantly, people do want to see curvy women. This website – started up after I worked on a mainstream fashion website and was constantly approached for help for dressing curves – proves that. And as I have said time and time again, curvy does not always mean fat. It definitely doesn’t mean ugly. It means natural, shapely, normal. Curvy can just as easily be attributed to a UK size 12 as a UK size 22. Nobody’s suggesting that Brigitte are suddenly going to fill their pages with obese housewives in high fashion (though if they did, good on ‘em), despite Largerfeld moaning that “You’ve got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly.” The magazine is simply taking a stand against the impossible ideal that the fashion press has promoted up to this point. Brigitte’s editor-in-chief told The Guardian, “For years we have had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up, especially their thighs and decolletage. But this is disturbing and perverse, and what has it got to do with our real reader?”

I think this is a fantastic step forward, hot on the heels of Glamour US’s use of a plus size model in an article about body confidence. These magazines are recognising their audience and targeting them (something that will undoubtedly shift more copies in a recession, and who can blame them for that). If just a handful of magazines started using healthy UK size 10 – 16 models on their pages instead of emaciated size 4 ones, the world would be a better place. If we start seeing some more women in magazines who look like the women we see in real life on a daily basis, perhaps all of us will get a much-needed confidence boost and be inspired to live a healthier life. As someone who is only slightly overweight, I look at women in magazines now and think “I could never look like that”. I would love to look at them and think “Hmmm, maybe one day!”

Lagerfeld argues that people don’t want to see curvy women because fashion should be about “dreams and illusions”. Fair enough, I’m not going to pretend I don’t love a catwalk show full of ethereally beautiful women in frocks that could never be worn in real life. But I can safely say that this is not my dream, nor will it ever be. My dream looks a hell of a lot more like this; someone who is curvy, healthy and beautiful inside and out.

Unlike Karl Lagerfeld.

[Lagerfeld doll via Dazed Digital]