Y2K fashion is back and with it comes low-rise jeans, high cropped tees, mini skirts, baggy pants, and the under boob. All trends that favor a very specific type of body: extremely thin long legs, small waists with toned, slim bellies and jutting hips.
How is the fashion industry planning to make this very skinny privileged 2000s trend size inclusive is the mystery.
The problem of trends
Thick is out, skinny is back. The problem is, for the majority of people, their body complexity is more of a permanent state than a trend. And so if now think is no longer in style, fashion brands are not going to tailor their designs for the curvy woman. While many fashion brands are still making an effort to cater to all body types, many others are falling short.
Many models have confessed that when it comes to high fashion there is a very low say-do ratio, as in they like to talk about inclusivity and diversity a lot, but behind closed doors they still follow outdated beauty standards, and they look down on larger bodies.
The problem of sizes
There is a lack of consensus and understanding of what size-inclusivity actually looks like. Everything above size 16 is considered “plus size.” And although there is increasingly more availability of big sizes, many of them are not nearly big enough. Also, the efforts to design for bigger bodies seems to be dwindling. Plus-size shoppers do not nearly find as many options as skinny people, just a few pieces here and there for each collection.
The problem of fitting
The human body does not scale up and down the same way that designs do. And because designers usually cater their garments to thin bodies, hoping that from there the designs can be scaled up and down, the result is very unflattering fits.
This issue is a testament to brands not hiring the right kind of model to design for the right kind of body. It is simply cheaper to just hope that scaling up a design to add more Xs is going to fit the range.
A couple of years ago, the fashion industry seemed to be taking a step in the right direction. However, now with the renewed skinny trends, the increasing complaints of customers that there are not enough plus-size choices, very few sustainable brands tailoring their designs for big bodies and very ill-fitting pieces for bigger bodies, it is only natural to suspect that we are not making a lot of progress anymore.
