The fashion industry has the first ‘midsize’ top, halfway between the ‘tábua’ and the ‘plus size’ model

The New York Times

At the Chanel haute couture show in Paris last month, one of the models had a feature that set her apart from everyone else on the runway.

Jill Kortleve is a woman of striking beauty, with almond-shaped eyes, deep dark brows and chiseled cheekbones. Since her runway debut, walking for Alexander McQueen in 2018, she has appeared on numerous magazine covers; she participated in fashion shows for Versace, MaxMara and Jacquemus; and starred in advertising campaigns for Valentino Beauty and Fendi, to limit ourselves to just a few examples.

But what makes her an unusual star for the high fashion industry isn’t the fact that she’s 29, which makes her older than many of her peers, or her height of 1.73 meters, which makes her just as lower than many of them. The difference is that Kortleve uses sizes eight or 10 in the American standard [42 a 44 no Brasil], that is, the so-called “medium size” – a term that the industry uses to designate the middle ground between “petite” and “plus size”. But the norm for models in the fashion industry remains the “board” size, i.e. less than 36.

“Plus size” models, who typically wear a size 46 or larger, have gained greater representation in the fashion industry. Curvy models like Paloma Elsesser, Precious Lee and Ashley Graham have built successful careers.

Kortleve, in recent years, has become one of the few medium-sized models to gain prominence. In January, she was the only mid-size model selected by Chanel for its haute couture show. At shows like Valentino’s, there were a handful of other models of this size, but last season Kortleve was the only mid-size model to be cast in her shows by the biggest names in the haute couture calendar.

The diversity (or lack thereof) on the runways has caused intense scrutiny in recent years. So, at a time when midsize fashion is gaining momentum elsewhere — in the mass market for clothing and on TikTok, where the #midsize hashtag has attracted more than four billion hits to date — why does it continue? to be ignored by the sovereigns of luxury fashion? And it’s 2023: what does the industry even mean by “midsize”?

‘STILL THE ONLY’

Much of the data on the average size of dresses sold in major consumer markets is out of date. Often-cited statistics suggesting that the average dress size worn by British and American women is a 50 are usually derived from studies published in 2016 or earlier.

The way in which certain sizes translate into measurements has changed over time and varies substantially from brand to brand and from outfit to outfit, which is one of the reasons millions of women struggle to buy clothes that fit them.

“It’s impossible to say with true accuracy what the average clothing size is for a woman in the United States,” Renee Engeln, director of the Body and Media Lab at Northwestern University, said in an email. She declined to numerically define which sizes are in the medium range and which sizes should be classified as “plus size”.

“The women’s fashion landscape is inaccessible for many body types, but not because it’s hard to determine whether the so-called ‘average woman’ is big or petite,” Engeln said. “The problem is that the big operators in the fashion industry still choose to exclude women whose bodies are incompatible with the brand image they want to cultivate.”

Kortleve, who has Dutch and Surinamese origins, may be enjoying a lot of success right now, but her modeling career was an uncomfortable start when she moved to Amsterdam at 18. She was determined to be a successful model in the traditional mold of the profession, wearing a size 36 or smaller. And she found it very difficult to do so.

“I was constantly on a diet 24/7 and pushing myself too hard to meet the industry standard,” Kortleve said recently on a freezing, windswept Amsterdam afternoon. “I was antisocial, I felt terrible, and I could never get ‘thin’ enough to land jobs anyway, so it felt like I was forcing myself to starve myself for nothing.”

“I had a fixed idea in my head of what a model needed to look like if they wanted to be successful,” said Kortleve, sipping a Coke. “I had 92 cm hips, but that was still far from enough – for reference, what they ask for today is 105 cm. And finally I reached a breaking point, mentally and physically. I had to walk away.”

That break meant a long trip to Bali and getting “SELF LOVE” tattooed on her hands before she decided to return to modeling in 2018 at a healthier weight — and, luckily, at a time when broader representations of beauty began to emerge on the high fashion runways. In September of that year, she was chosen for an Alexander McQueen fashion show, despite being virtually unknown. After that, Kortleve began to be asked more frequently, until 2020, when headlines labeled her as the first curvy or “plus-size” model to walk for Chanel since Crystal Renn a decade earlier.

Except that Kortleve wore – and continues to wear – a size 44, which, outside of the fashion industry, almost no one would define as “plus size”.

“It’s problematic for sure,” Kortleve said. “I’m clearly not a ‘plus size’ model, and I’ve never had to face the situations that my plus size colleagues face because they can’t find clothes in their size in stores; that doesn’t happen to someone my size.”

“I don’t want to be pigeonholed or put into any category, whether it’s ‘board’ model, ‘midsize’, ‘plus size’ or whatever,” she added.

These days, Kortleve said, people want to look at magazines or Instagram and feel represented, particularly younger consumers. “Brands know that casting someone of a more normal weight, like me – something that continues to be called a medium size – helps them appear closer to that position to their customers,” she said. “Even though I often remain the only model my size at events.”

A MOVEMENT, OR A MOMENT, FOR MEDIUM SIZE?

Alexandra van Houtte, chief executive of Tagwalk, a fashion search service, noted that while her platform has reference tags for 83 curvy models, Tagwalk’s database only includes three “midsize” models: Kortleve, Celina Ralph and, more recently, Ajok Daing.

During the most recent season of ready-to-wear shows in September, Van Houtte said that more than half of the “fashion weeks” shows still did not include models whose sizes were larger than 36 or 38, perhaps not coincidentally, as we live in a time when extreme thinness is back in fashion.

“Sadly, my feeling is that we’ve stepped back on the catwalk in terms of size representation — especially in Europe,” said Kenya Hunt, editor of Elle UK magazine. After years of the body positivity movement gaining influence, there is now a stagnation in terms of size inclusion, in contrast to better representation in terms of race, age and gender. Models can satisfy these other representativeness requirements and still be thin.

“Many of the models cast in fashion weeks are getting back to feeling performative,” said Mina White, an agent for IMG Models, who has represented Kortleve since last year. “Having only one or two curvy or average-size models per show doesn’t reflect a significant change or true inclusivity. It’s just a symbolic representation, especially if any diversity of sizes on camera doesn’t translate into what looks for average-size women or ‘plus’ seen on the catwalks arrive later in stores.”

While this category may be being overlooked by the fashion mainstream, thousands of TikTok users who think of themselves as average-size people are creating content about it, which includes testing clothes from fashion brands that offer models in average sizes, or copies of luxury brand products that people like them can’t afford to buy. Other creators offer tips on how people should dress to emphasize their best features and downplay those they feel less confident about; there are also discussions of the manipulative power of marketing and brands’ aversion to fat, and how to escape it.

However, despite these uplifting notes, social networks can also provide a portal for pages that promote excessive thinness and spread toxic messages. But Kortleve is encouraged to see young people calling attention to the issue of induced body shame, and the need for people to personally create fashions for the real bodies they have if the fashion industry doesn’t.

“It honestly makes me happy and relieved,” she said. “I feel a real responsibility to represent women who have bodies similar to mine in the fashion world, but there’s also a lot of pressure. Like, if I don’t walk the show, or if I say no to a show invitation, will they do it? another average-sized girl? Or go back to your usual pattern and go back to the past?”

Both Kortleve and White said that better representation would only be achieved when the size of the pieces created as a sample move away from the traditional size 36 mannequin and when all photo shoots and clothing fittings offer options of medium and “plus” sizes, the which means that models from those categories can be hired to show the pieces. If clothes don’t fit or fit well, collections need to be curated to suit a variety of body shapes.

For now, mid-size and plus-size models almost always have pieces made especially for them — one-of-a-kind creations that may land them magazine covers or billboards but never go into production for ordinary women to buy. For Engeln, the absence of an industrial infrastructure that would allow larger models to succeed underscores the fact that brands are still locked into the idea that mini-size models make them more money, even as the mid-size movement on TikTok suggests that there is a wider market.

“In the images seen in the media, the link between money and thinness is undeniable,” said Engeln. The main motivation of almost all fashion brands is to make money, she added, “not to build a more inclusive industry.”

“If brands don’t use more than one medium-sized model [em seus desfiles] it’s because they don’t believe they will benefit if they do.”