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Has fashion understood that the world has changed?

Paloma Elsesser is a model outside the canons: she is 24 years old, origins scattered between South America and Switzerland, she was born in London but raised in Los Angeles, she was discovered by an agency in New York and today she is among the most famous plus size models in the world. At 11 he entered a dressing room and went out in tears because he could not find a single trousers that fit his size.

The fashion seen in these days at the Milan fashion week shows seems to have remained locked up in that dressing room.

And it doesn’t matter if in the meantime a pandemic has broken out that has accelerated all changes, including those concerning inclusive beauty: there is no trace of Paloma on the catwalks of Milan. What’s more: on all the platforms of the Italian designers you can see only models of the same size and with the same physicality (tall, thin and slender) with one exception. AND Jill Kortleve, Dutch plus size model, who, however, is like a white fly, a hasty remedy rather than a real choice or a real stance. And to find other bodies, other forms, we need to look at very young creatives, such as the promising Act N.1 and Sunnei. But shouldn’t fashion, especially that of great designers, follow and understand changes and, at best, anticipate or provoke them? Why then today continues to indulge in such a non-inclusive beauty?

The first answer is definitely the method. Exactly as happened a few years ago, when the theme of the presence of BIPOC was posed, that is of blacks, natives and people of color in a parade of only white models, the raising of shields was silent or unanimous: but why, yes many asked, should beauty be categorized by the number of whites, blacks and Asians? Today the same question snakes with yet another excuse: isn’t it a political correctness drift to want to include all forms of female bodies at all costs? Isn’t Jill Kortleve enough?

No, that’s not enough. For two reasons. The first is because in a moment of revolution (and we are experiencing a truly radical one) every extremization is necessary. Perhaps forced, perhaps instrumental but certainly necessary. Many, for example, yesterday criticized women’s quotas, or rather the forced presence of women in contexts in which it has historically been denied. The pink quotas, like the inclusion of different and non-compliant beauty, are a necessary step to reach a world where the problem of the presence of women in society will no longer be a problem. Just like, hopefully, inclusive beauty will happen.

Secondly, however, it is important that fashion radically changes the point of view on the beauty of bodies simply because fashion is one of the most powerful and pervasive tools of communication and learning. On the one hand, in fact, clothes accompany us in life and define us (for roles, choices, sexuality, identity and individuality) as very few other goods are able to do. On the other hand, fashion and its system of images and values ​​is one of the means that can help us most in the process of emancipation from an idea of ​​canonical and exclusive beauty to one that is more universal, broad and perhaps more human.

However, there remains a problem of method which, in reality, could become a golden opportunity for the entire system. To date, the samples of the collections (the models of the clothes) and even the patterns of the clothes (that is the basic structures of the clothes, those used to organize their production) are designed in a single size that reflects what we see on the catwalk, or rather thin and wiry models. Wouldn’t it be the case instead to model creativity, from the beginning, on non-conforming and stereotyped bodies? What would fashion be like if instead of a thin, tall and wiry model, it was thought of all types of physicality?

It would be a radical change, not easy, not short but perhaps very, very promising. Something that perhaps would be able to defuse an obsolete and dusty mechanism and then trigger a new way of looking and looking at ourselves. Fashion needs this change. Not only because the world has already changed, but to take back the place it deserves, namely that of generator of change. Otherwise, the space in which she will find herself moving will be that of Pamela’s dressing room at 11.

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