Marketing “Real” Bodies

One recent evening, on Park Avenue, in Manhattan, fashion editors lined a white runway in the Seagram Building as models walked past on high heels, wearing embroidered eyelet jackets and lace cocktail dresses by the designer Isabel Toledo. The models were presenting the spring line that Toledo had created for Lane Bryant, the plus-sized-clothing chain. They were not thin.

Vogue called the models “astonishingly lovely,” as if they were a previously undiscovered species. Fashion has long been dominated by a familiar figure: unusually tall, yet childishly slender. The main point of variation tends to be whether models are athletic or waifish; Kate Upton counts as an outlier. But some brands are finding that people will applaud even their most timid efforts to deviate from the standard model physique. Earlier this year, American Eagle Outfitters, which sells clothes to teen-agers, unveiled an ad campaign for its Aerie lingerie line by saying that “the girls in these photos have not been retouched.” The models had small tattoos or bellies that had not been hollowed out by a computer program. “It’s a selling point,” Jenny Altman, American Eagle’s “fit expert,” told Juju Chang, of “Good Morning America.” Typically, she said, customers “don’t get to see what girls their age really look like.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com