Why are companies still choosing to use only very slender models?

[WildFlowerBees]

I get it, the clothes look great and I can choose not to buy etc but it's not representative of all of the market, maybe that's their target market.

For instance I was having a look at Me&Em not one model over a size 8/10 I want to see what lovely clothes might look like on all different shapes and sizes or is it that their clothes will look shit unless you're tall and willowy.

Why in 2022 are companies still allowed to discriminate in this way because choosing very slim models only seems like discrimination to me.

I'm a size 12 I'm 5ft 7 but not willowy I have big norks and I feel invisible a lot of the time when it comes to clothing.

Am I being unreasonable with my little rant?

The two girls in the same clothes - interesting. IMO the overweight girl has a more attractive face and her hair / makeup is better styled, she does a model look straight into the camera and does strong poses so she is more striking in the photos - she’s very photogenic, than her friend who just stands there. But I don’t think the clothes look better on the larger model.

When I look at the clothes I don't look at their faces so I think the makeup is irrelevant. The overweight girl is very curvaceous and has a huge difference between bust/hip and waist size and that's why I think most of the clothes look better on her. Of course, that's now what I look like now or what I would look like if I put on two stones.

You all seem to be ignoring the fact that they are different ethnicities too when you often get different looks or shapes. I spent my whole young life wanting no hips or a bum then travelled and worked abroad and found out that my desired no hips/bum shape was laughed at in certain parts of the world. I'm quite at home in a Hispanic community and always get addressed in Spanish.😂

I have hard earned muscles, sizeable breasts, and fat pads on my belly, hips, bum and thighs. It's next to useless to me to show garments hanging off the bone structure of a teenage size 4 with none of the above.

It adds to my carbon footprint to have to order and return things which are not made for an hourglass shape so lately I just haven't been bothering.

I end up buying a lot of clothes from Seasalt online because they use models in a range of sizes and shapes which means I get a good sense of which clothes would work on me.

I also really like when companies have photos of customers wearing the clothes. Have often been inspired to buy a garment that I wouldn't have realised would look nice IRL.

I just want to echo this feeling! I am just coming out of Next, after choosing I few items (size 14-16) I had to spent some time in the queue watching their ads videos of super slim models, and I just left feeling so bad and ugly in comparison. I also don't understand why they cannot have models in all the sizes they sell.

Please, can anyone recommend other shops with physical stores (Manchester) that have models of all sizes? I do not want to come back to a shop that makes me feel like that ever again 😕

I don't see skinny models anymore, maybe it depends on the brand? They are usually a healthy size 10, tall but certainly not underweight.

I don't think the model looked unhealthy necessarily, just frustrated there are not more models showcasing looking good in other sizes they clearly sell 😕

Here one of the models in the shop ads for reference
https://www.next.co.uk/g80407s2/829565#829565

I agree, her friend, although slender is too straight up and down, and not erm generously sized in the chest department.

@MariG300 perhaps I'm old-fashioned but that photo does nothing to sell the clothes! The entire outfit seems to be in need of ironing and the cut of the waistcoat looks like a man's, no curves. Maybe a 'manly look' is the point...? Don't know.

I was looking in Amazon for dresses for work today.

I wanted knee length and one I liked the look of had a ‘model’ sized model in a close-up but the rest of the photos were of a very large model, and the skirt hung really badly and the dress looked very ill-fitting and uncomfortable - and she definately needed a better bra - probably because it had been designed with a stick insect in mind.

I’m no skinny Minnie these days but I’d prefer to see clothes on a ‘model size ’ to see how they hang and length (it’s useful when they say the height of the model). There was one designer who had two cuts of dresses so that you could choose a more ‘generous’ cut that would fit better.

It’s often helpful to see review photos. Mum was quite heavy at one point and shopped at a ‘larger lady’ shop where the clothes were cut to fit her size/shape and be more flattering (and comfortable).

To evaluate what an item of clothing will look like on me, I need the model to be a standard size. Plus size would work only if they were all plus size. The ideal would be using your own avatar, but failing that I use my experience to imagine what something worn on a skinny 5ft 10 woman would look on dumpy and short me.

It is good when at least some clothes for women are less curvy, not every woman is the same shape. My chest and hips are the same measurements so it is difficult to buy tops that fit.

I looked at the Vogue SS24 Web page yesterday. I understand why they use thin models but in lots of those pictures the girls look unhealthy. They seem to have no decent muscle mass/ tone to their legs either. I thought we'd moved past that.

I think it's already the law that you can't use underweight models.

There are companies who show what the clothes look like on different size models, so it can be done. ( Well done to Mutha.hood, the most recent example I've seen).
I hope more will follow suit.

This kind of thing only bothers me when its a plus sized range.
They pick a 'fat' model (6ft tall and a huuuuuuge size 14!) to showcase the clothes.
Honestly if you are chubby you really just want to see what everything looks like on a fellow chubby person!

I guess the clothes are designed for very slim bodies (like teen boys really) rarely with boobs (my sister does go to a ladies shop that has ranges for those of larger boobage and the cuts actually fit very nicely).

I saw a swimsuit article in some woman’s magazine and they used very large ladies - the (knitted - so a bit saggy) cozzies looked absolutely awful, very unflattering, no support so boobs hanging very low/out of the top. They looked very uncomfortable and were not cut to flatter/fit a curvier figure.

I too have same bust/hip measurement and find dresses don’t fit properly.

I want to see how the clothes look on people like me. I'm 5'5", size 14 and in my 50s. I'm not unusual in this hence the rise of instagrammers and YouTubers who look more like me. It shows that there is a demand to see people who are shorter, fatter and older than the models look in the clothes.

I suspect that companies would sell well and also reduce returns by showing the clothes on different bodies.

If they did this it would not make me any more or less likely to lose weight and I think it's patronising and foolish to suggest otherwise. There is no need to punish people who are overweight by making it tough to find clothing that will fit or look good, especially when 60% of UK women are overweight.

I'm more or less you in terms of age/size,/height. I found inspiration a few years ago from Kat Farmer (does my bum ..
). Although she's tall and very thin, a lot of stuff she wears suits me. I also get inspiration from the Friday Twinning from Choe dell'Ollio and Trinny Woodall, where they both wear the sane outfit. Chloe is larger than me, but I like seeing their styling. Kemi Telford also models her own designs and she's a very normal size 12. That style influenced my clothing choices radically when I hit my 50s.

I don’t why they don’t just have cuts to fit body shapes (well I do - it’s financial) but a dress that suits a tally skinny woman looks awful on someone who is larger/shorter, and some cuts are too short for taller women (something that should be knee length is a knicker-grazer).

Yes you can look at something in a model and think ‘that won’t suit my shape’ or ‘that will cover my bum/thighs/arms (I have rather fat upper arms - always have even when I was size 8) etc but wouldn’t it be nice to see something modelled in a range of sizes? Isn’t there some AI that can do this already?

On a lot of sites that my young people use, there are pictures of real life people in those clothes (like Shein, other ones), and those are often gorgeous people, in a range of sizes, so you can see what it looks like if you have a big bust, or a bigger waist or whatever.

I did a double-take at an ad today for dresses, I'm not a fan of the mid-length print dress anyway, but the ones I were presented with were all worn by a very thin model with extremely thin ankles and the contrast between that and the billowy dress was stark- irrelevant to me and most of the middle-aged cohort they are advertising to. Some companies are getting with the program with this and some are not.

Because getting a good fit on women who aren't tall an slender is much harder.
The pattern are drawn to a standard shape and that's the way the designers have been taught.
Fashion Sketching: a Step-by-step Guide to Drawing the Basic Fashion Croquis with 9 Heads Proportions | For Beginners — amiko simonetti

I don't mind slim models, what I don't like is when they're so thin you have no idea what the garment would look like on a more normal body. Zara is terrible for this, and Boden has recently started doing it.

Me too. I'm not big enough for plus size.... but I'm not a size 8. I recently discovered mid size fashion. I never even knew it was a thing! There's loads of stuff on Instagram if you search for mid size fashion inspiration. It's given me lots of ideas on things to wear.

I’ve been overweight in the past and am now at a very healthy weight. I honestly don’t feel inspired to buy clothes when I see them modelled by someone who is overweight. I think it’s as simple as that, really.