Ashley Graham has basically won in 2016. From being the first plus size model on the cover of Sports Illustrated she then took her curves on a global tour essentially taking whatever she wanted en route. This has meant that model, Ashley Graham and her famous curves have ended the year with not one but two British magazine covers – British Vogue and British Cosmopolitan.
Ashley Graham, an advocate for body positivity – and less so for the tag ‘plus size’ still managed to cause some controversy though when posing for arguably one of the most respected fashion bibles in the world.
Editor at Vogue, Alexandra Schulman revealed this week that numerous brands turned down the opportunity to dress Ashley Graham and her famous thighs – leaving the shoot in real jeopardy as the fashion magazine struggled to curate the collections they wanted to use. While this doesn’t surprise us at SLiNK HQ – we can’t say we aren’t disappointed!
Having said that, we applaud Vogue for putting Ashley on the cover and for pulling the shoot out the bag. The truth is – aside from many designer brands simply not catering to Ashley’s size – so in many cases would it not have been hypocritical to even specially create something for her? It seems that while pockets of the fashion industry have noted that plus size women, plus size clothing and plus size models can no longer be ignored – there is still an overwhelming number of brands that still have a supposed beauty standard they wish to keep to.
With all that being said we feel it was a shame and a missed opportunity on Vogue’s part to really champion some of the plus size fashion brands that are in the market right now – even if it had simply been long standing Vogue advertiser – Marina Rinaldi at least shooting a plus size model like Ashley Graham would have actually felt like an extended olive branch to the plus size readers and potential plus size women they consistently and continue to ignore.