Thinking big

As a follow up to last year's Brandchameleon post Expanding Your Audience, check out the new issue of V magazine - The Size Issue. Well done to all the brands who produced non-sample sized items for the shoots.

V Magazine - The Size Issue

The models were shot by Terry Richardson and look great in the clothes featured. Added fuel to the argument that while conventionally thin models may be convenient for brands to use as they represent a standard size and image, there are alternatives.

At the Luxury Briefing Conference: Smart Ideas for Challenging Times held in London in November 2009, Dr Concetta Lanciaux, advisor to Bernard Arnault at LVMH, talked about how Mark Fast's London Fashion Week presentation which included different sizes of model (Luxury Briefing Conference Report). While Fast's show personally left me cold – use big models, fine, but nobody should trot down a catwalk in diaphanous or crochet dresses with badly-fitting underwear – Lanciaux pointed out that by innovating in this way, Fast had opened his brand up to scores of women who might otherwise have thought that the brand was for them, while while attracting global publicity.