Robyn Lawley strikes again - in Vogue Australia's first ever plus size fashion shoot

max doyle for vogue australia september 2011

On the occasion of her groundbreaking recent cover of Vogue Italia, alongside two other plus-sized models, we mentioned that Australia’s Robyn Lawley had another high fashion coup up her sleeve, just shot in Australia with Max Doyle. Frockwriter can reveal that that shoot is in fact a 10-page designer fashion editorial called 'Belle Curve' in the September edition of Vogue Australia, which is out on August 3rd. Subscriber copies landed today (thanks to our tipster who emailed the shots in). The editorial is accompanied by a double-page interview with Lawley. According to Kirstie Clements' editor's letter, this is the first time in Vogue Australia's 52-year history that the magazine has shot a plus-sized model for a fashion editorial. Hot on the heels of Lawley’s Vogue Italia cover and her Elle France cover in April, 2011 is turning out to be a banner year for Lawley, Bonner and the plus size-specialist modelling industry. 

Clements continues in her editor's letter:

“This is the first time Vogue Australia has shot a larger model and of course now that we have done it, I ask myself why we didn’t do it sooner. But that’s because Robyn is especially gorgeous. I went to the shoot to meet her and was transfixed by her beauty and poise. She is a truly super duper model. When a plus size model first turns up to the studio, she may be an anomaly to a team normally used to working with size 6’s, but once photographer Max Doyle started shooting Robyn, we quickly readjusted our preconceived notions of beauty. She doesn’t actually look plus size to me at all now. I said to a colleague on set later that day, “And men like curves don’t they?” He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Yes Kirsty, we certainly do” was his laconic reply. It’s an interesting conversation – the world of high fashion and fuller-figured women. One that needs to be continued”.

According to Lawley's Australian agent, Chelsea Bonner, the director of plus size-specialist agency Bella Model Management, the Vogue Australia editorial is an even sweeter victory than the Vogue Italia cover. 

“The amazing thing about the Vogue Australia shoot is that they actually dressed her - went out and found these beautiful designer garments to wear” Bonner told frockwriter. “Which just proves the point that there is clothing available for plus size models to wear in high fashion, it just takes a little bit of extra effort to find them. Vogue Australia went to that effort and the results are incredible”.

Of the rollercoaster media ride that ensued in the wake of the Italian cover, Bonner adds, “It went viral worldwide, has been commented on in I don’t know how many hundreds of magazines, blog sites and newspapers. And it reflects, I think, definitely the shift in consumers. Women want to see more realistic-sized models in magazines. They’re screaming for it. The response that we had from Italian Vogue was absolutely out of control. But my personal opinion is that Australian Vogue has blown Italian Vogue out of the water because of the fact that it is a true fashion editorial - rather than having curvy girls in lingerie, like they normally do. It’s not just having a token plus size model. It’s a true fashion editorial”.  

photographer: max doyle
fashion editor: meg gray
fashion assistant: megha kapoor
makeup: justine purdue
hair: renya xydis

Robyn Lawley covers ELLE France

One of the strengths of the Australian modelling industry, say industry insiders in New York, is its extraordinary versatility. "You cross every section - you have sexy, you have edgy, you have androgynous, you have it all” Elite Model Management's Doll Wright tells frockwriter. Add curvy to that list. Twenty-one year-old Robyn Lawley has just pulled off what no other plus-size Australian model has thus far managed to do: score the cover of an international fashion title. Here is Lawley on the cover of French ELLE’s ‘Spécial Rondes’ issue, which has just hit the newsstands. She also appears on 10 other pages inside the issue. Even more exciting: on Monday and Tuesday this week in New York, we can reveal that Lawley, an Australian size 14, shot an editorial and cover try for the June issue of far more prestigious European fashion title, with one of fashion's biggest photographic names. Yes, the shoot was for a plus-size story. But give her time.

Already, the world’s most high-profile plus size model, Crystal Renn, is ranked world number 21 on models.com’s Top 50 Women list, alongside the biggest so-called “straight size” names in the business. The latter include Australia’s Catherine McNeil, who is ranked #24.

Models move up and down on the list, pending how “hot” they are in the business – and their "hotness" factor can be impacted by whether or not they have gained weight.

Renn's rapid rise in the fashion industry has seen her recently book advertising campaigns for Jean Paul Gaultier and Jimmy Choo, shoot editorials for Vogue Paris and now her first Vogue cover, Vogue Mexico. 

Many have argued, however, that Renn's 'high fashion' ascent has coincided with a dramatic fall in her BMI. Although Renn concedes that she has recently stepped up her exercise regime, she insists she is a US size 10 - an Australian size 12. This is still significantly bigger than most other models with whom Renn is competing for mainstream fashion jobs.  

Lawley’s story is not unlike Renn’s – as documented in Renn's 2009 book Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves.

Originally from Sydney, but now New York-based, Lawley began modelling at the age of 14, when she was a size 8-10 according to her Australian agent Chelsea Bonner at Bella Model Management. 

One of her first jobs was for Dolly magazine, an editorial accompanied by a headline that would become a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least in the skinny-obsessed modelling business: "Super Size Me".

At 186cm (6’2”), however, it wasn’t only Lawley’s height that spooked clients. 

As Lawley matured, she had difficulty maintaining that size 8-10. Although she did try various diets, unlike Renn, she never developed an eating disorder according to Bonner.

At 18, Lawley gave up trying to fit in to the mainstream modelling business and joined Bonner at Bella. She never looked back, booking editorial work with Madison, Cosmopolitan, The Australian Women’s Weekly, New Idea, Woman's Day, US Glamour, Germany's Flair and advertising campaigns for Autograph, David Jones, Myer, Calvin Klein and, recently, H&M. 

At New York Fashion Week in February, Lawley was the solo star of the One Stop Plus show, which was broadcast in Times Square:

 

But if fashion is – very gradually – starting to include larger models, this apparently does not mean that agents like Bonner want to help facilitate any size 22s getting up on that runway.

Bonner reports that she often fields complaints from consumers that her models “aren’t big enough”.

“What is big enough?” she asks. “Big enough to us at Bella is if you are within your healthy weight range for your height and bone structure, that’s big enough. You shouldn’t be above that. With size 22 models, the garments don’t fit right. And it’s not healthy. I’ve not yet met a woman who is a size 22 who is healthy. Of course, there are also a lot of girls who are far too thin”.

all images: supplied by bella management

The big league: H&M launches a plus size collection for Spring

Karl Lagerfeld severed ties with H&M in part because the company wanted to produce his collection in large sizes, while he was reportedly only interested in designing “fashion for slender and slim people”. But it seems the Swedish fast fashion behemoth hasn’t let this rain on its plus size parade. From early March, H&M will offer a 20-unit capsule collection called, simply, Inclusive, which will be available in sizes 32-54 and sold exclusively online (these would appear to be Swedish sizes, which equate to an Australian 6-28). Many thanks to Runway Revolution for the headsup. Why online only? In 2008, when Australian designer Leona Edmiston decided to double her size range to a 24, coincidentally she also only offered the larger sizes online, after her research indicated that many larger women felt uncomfortable in boutiques. 

After frockwriter (in her previous incarnation as Fully Chic) opened up what would become a rather heated discussion on the subject, others added in that many larger women in fact feel unwelcome in mainstream fashion boutiques. 

Considering that so many fashion boutiques appear not to have much stock over a size 10, is that so very surprising? 

So far H&M appears only to be shipping to Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Swedish Finland and the UK, but we have a hunch they may be about to be inundated with global enquiries. 

The accompanying campaign features plus size Australian model Robyn Lawley (second from the top).  

Great initiative. Adorable dresses. Not before time.

all images: H&M

Wayne Cooper in talks for his own tv show, still hating on plus size women

screen caps 'the wc'/exero films

Wayne Cooper could be the “Gordon Ramsay of the fashion business” if Kostas Metaxas has anything to do with it. The Melbourne-based filmmaker has a "fashion comedy miniseries" called The WC starring Cooper in development and is currently talking to Australian and international television networks. Curiously, there has been zip local publicity on this, beyond a press release about a National Association of Television Program Executives award the teaser webisode, below, won in LA in July. The webisode was made specifically for the latter competition according to Metaxas, who tells frockwriter he has shot three quarters of the material for a full-length feature, but that The WC could be, pending interest, “a feature, a tv series or 20 webisodes....This is like a starting point. Wayne is an interesting character, and he’s an exceptional actor. And at the same time he has a sense of humour. He understands that what we’re doing is not meant to be rocket science”.





The concept, a mélange of scripted sitcom and reality television, Sacha Baron Cohen-style, revolves around Cooper’s real-life job as a fashion designer. Written and produced by Metaxas, it is, coincidentally, being shopped around at the same time that New York fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone is said to be in talks with MTV regarding a new script-based fashion show.

The webisode - which also stars professional actors Tim Constantine as Cooper’s assistant “Sydney London” and Elisabeth Shingleton as the advertising manager for Vague magazine, in addition to cameos from Melbourne hair stylists Stavros Tavrou and James Razos from Collins Street salon Rakis - sees Cooper preparing to show at London Fashion Week. The fictional scenario has Baz Lurhmann tapped as Cooper's show producer, a planned mandolin-and-didgeridoo musical score and a stream of VIP phone calls into Cooper's studio from (former Australian PM) Kevin Rudd, (Oz celebrity) Lara Bingle and Boy George - all fobbed off by Cooper.   

Metaxas might just as easily have based the story on Cooper’s real life story, which at times has verged on a soap opera.

A London law school graduate, the loudmouth Cockney emigrated to Australia in 1985, settling in Sydney and later founding the Brave and Wayne Cooper fashion labels.

Cooper was the first designer to show at Mercedes Australian Fashion Week in May 2006 and in 2000 he was the first Australian (not counting US-based expat Richard Tyler) to show at New York Fashion Week. Known for his extravagant spending, in 2005 Cooper went into voluntary administration, owing $3million. Later that year, he and his family narrowly escaped a terrorist bomb blast in a restaurant in Bali. 

In 2008 he endured a messy, public split from his partner Sarah Marsh who accused him of domestic abuse on national television. Cooper later pleaded guilty to common assault. The pair eventually reunited and were married in Bali last month.  

“They’re going to do a pilot with someone in New York, I think it’s going to be an American thing” was all Cooper could tell us this afternoon, when we tracked him down in his car.

Metaxas is no stranger to television, having sold numerous documentary series to networks in Australia and other markets, including the Masters of Luxury (2008) and the Masters of Fashion (2005). He met Cooper while shooting the latter.

Although obviously a parody, The WC webisode nevertheless features several vox pops and footage of real people and fashion figures, shot in Melbourne and London. 

One of them features in the closing scene, which comes across as particularly snarky.  

In it, Constantine and Shingleton salivate over an off-camera black dress.

“It’s magnificent - it’s like a cold glass of water after being out in the desert for years” effuses Shingleton.

The camera pans over to show an apparently unsuspecting Hayley Hughes (above), a Melbourne blogger, photographer and stylist (who regular readers may recall recently starred in this Today Tonight story about plus size discrimination in the Australian fashion industry).

In another part of the film, Cooper describes one of his dresses as “very slimming”. Cooper famously once described Australian models as “porky” compared to their European counterparts.

“I think it’s tongue in cheek” says Metaxas of the Hughes scene. “It’s the notion that fashion and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s not meant to be a putdown. If you met me, I’m also large. It’s like the Jews making jokes about the Jews. We’re not trying to be too serious”.


all images: screencaps 'the wc'/exero films
 

Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and others reportedly to offer plus size clothing at Saks Fifth Avenue, while France launches a plus size manifesto

karl lagerfeld for V via models.com

It’s been interesting tracking the story of plus sized designer clothing over the past two years. In March 2008, at Fully Chic, we incurred the wrath of some plus-sized consumers after reporting that although Target Australia made up to a size 16 in its Stella McCartney collection in 2007, so much size 16 merch was left on the sales racks Target stopped at a 14 when it came to producing its next collab with Zac Posen. Several weeks later we reported that Australian designer Leona Edmiston was doubling her size range to a 24 – but only in her online boutique. The story triggered a heated debate amongst those who lauded Edmiston's pioneering efforts - and those who claimed the move was “normalising obesity". Last year, Today Tonight took size 16 Melbourne blogger Hayley Hughes undercover into Melbourne’s Chapel Street. She found virtually no merchandise over size 12. Eighteen designers and retailers refused to discuss with the program why fashion's high end actively discriminates against larger consumers by ignoring them, with insiders citing concerns the issue was "bad for their image". So it was with some surprise that we spotted what could be the best-kept secret in the fashion business: a report that Saks Fifth Avenue is about to trial plus sizes from luxury brands including Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Dolce e Gabbana and Fendi on its New York designer womenswear floor.

New York retail blog Racked reports:

“Saks Fifth Avenue is about to become the only major retailer in the city to carry plus-sized womenswear by names like Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana. Coming very soon to the department store's super high-end third floor, fall and winter plus-sized pieces will be mixed right in with existing stock—most of which would formerly have only been available in sizes ranging to a 10. Stock will reach size 14 (Australian size 18) across the board, and in some cases—depending on the brand—will go up to a size 20 (Australian size 24)".

The story also mentions the brands Akris, Armani, Carolina Herrera, Escada, Donna Karan, St. John, Oscar de la Renta, Max Mara, Valentino, Michael Kors, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Roberto Cavalli.

The plus-size pieces will be one-offs, reports Racked, adding that if the trial is successful it may be rolled out to other stores.

No sources are cited beyond the Saks website, which makes no reference to the initiative. Due to the time difference, it was difficult to track down anyone who could throw further light on the matter. Frockwriter is waiting to hear back from Saks Fifth Avenue, Chanel USA and the Yves Saint Laurent, Dolce e Gabbana and Fendi head offices.
 
Chanel Australia knew nothing about it. 

UPDATE 28/07: A full business day later and no response from any of the above. Nor does there appear to be any comment from either Saks or any of the brands reportedly involved in the plus size trial in the deluge of coverage that has since ensued on this story. This is not surprising, given my experience with October's Today Tonight story and even the Leona Edmiston story two years ago. After doubling her size range to 24 in her online boutique, Edmiston declined all interviews. Sources indicated this was out of fear of being branded "a plus size designer". Fashion companies may be warming to the idea of going after the fat dollar, but they still seem to think there's a stigma attached to it. 
 
Coincidentally, Chanel recently cast plus size model Crystal Renn in its Cruise 2011 show. 

In January, Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld also shot plus size burlesque artist Miss Dirty Martini for V Magazine’s Size issue (above), one of a raft of recent fashion titles that have been dedicated to larger sizes. They include ELLE Spéciale Rondes and Vogue Curvy.

Curiously, Lagerfeld's V Size issue shoot followed a matter of months after he derided efforts by German magazine Brigitte to use “ordinary, realistic” women rather than professional models as “absurd”, adding that the world of fashion is about "dreams and illusions.... noone wants to see round women" and describing those leading the chorus of disapproval against skinny models as:

"fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television."

The Saks Fifth Avenue story coincides with news of the launch of a "Manifesto for the Visibility of Plus Size Fashion" by online French magazine Ma Grande Taille.

Citing data published by the French Institute of Textiles and Clothing, which indicates that more than 40percent of the French population wear plus size clothes, the manifesto boasts over 1000 signatories including plus size model Johanna Dray and celebrity Velvet d’Amour. 

I first interviewed d'Amour in Paris in October 2006, after she walked in Jean Paul Gaultier's Spring/Summer 2007 show - and then again in 2008. At 130kgs, d'Amour has been considered too big for even the plus-size modelling industry. 

“My hope is that it [the manifesto] would indeed make a difference - if nothing else it details what we look to change- inclusion, particularly in fashion” she told frockwriter, adding that the biggest buzz in the plus-size industry at the moment is the controversy over Renn's alleged weight loss.

"Personally I think if we were allowed more then ONE HUMAN BEING to represent our entire chubby populace then we wouldn't be so entirely focused on her. Given her anorexic issues in the past, it cant be easy for her to have everyone and their second cousin demonizing her for fluctuation. She is not the one who books models for mags. I think the question is less about Crystal, and more about the fact that while we are globally millions strong, we have, more or less, just one individual who has made her way into the mainstream magazines. Her weight fluctuations are dramatic, and they are all her own. As I have always been on the far extreme end of ‘plus’ modeling, people would equally debate my status as a ‘plus’ model, stating I was a “bbw”, not a plus model.

“We need to push for media inclusion, so that all shapes and sizes etc ‘belong’. When the media excludes us to such an extreme, magazines like PLUS are what get started. Models make their own way, and people who haven’t the ‘right’ to be considered a ‘plus’ model, or a straight size model, etc pick up the camera and start their own revolution. If we can use the frustration our exodus encites in a positive manner, then there will be no stopping us, and there will be so many damn fat models getting thin and thin models getting fat, that we wont have time to debate it, because we will be on the way to our next shooting ;o)".

On June 27th, the Australian federal government's National Body Image Advisory Group unveiled its Voluntary Industry Code of Conduct on Body Image. The code's  industry recommendations include using a greater diversity of body shapes in the promotion of fashion and the need for retailers to embrace a wider range of sizes to better reflect consumer demand.