Zara - is this the shape women should aspire to be?

[TanyaTonyaMargaret]

I was just looking for a dress for my teen dd for Christmas. I looked on Zara www.zara.com/uk/en/sequin-dress-p00387169.html?v1=7386534&v2=1074622.

My dd is average (size 8) and has what my mother would refer to as a ‘good bust’. She’s a similar shape to most of her friends. It’s almost impossible to gauge whether these clothes would look good on her. I have lots of ‘slim’ friends but don’t know anyone who looks even remotely the shape of these women. I know four women who are 6 ft but they don’t look anything like this shape either. To be fair to Zara I then looked at their male clothing to see what their models were like. They were fairly slim but not like the women. I’m not saying they need to use overweight people but just vaguely average would be great.

Hopefully it’s just Zara and I am about to be delighted by what I find on other retailer’s sites. Fingers crossed.

and the UK is typically NOT pipecleaner thin you know?

Let's think of some insults for fat people now.

Zara is singled out because they are the first website I clicked on this morning!

I didn’t say there was anything wrong with having a small bust but not everyone does. But every model does (certainly on Zara’s website). If you were looking at clothes and every single model was 5ft 3 with huge norks, would you find that useful?!

Electricmonkey - no I don’t know any ‘thin’ women. I do know lots of women who are size 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, a few who are 8s or 20s but not any who are size zero, 4 or 6. I’m not willing to say where I live.

I'm a size 14, aged 43, and Zara large, or size 14, fits me perfectly. Bra size is 34E so I hardly lack curves.

What I do object to is their size guide asks you to put your weight in. I find this bears no relationship to size at all.

Clothes look better on tall people in general. And if you are slim most people would say clothes look better. Whether the majority of the population looks like this is fairly irrelevant. Zara are there to sell clothes that look good.
I agree it would be nice to see some normal looking models but they like don’t sell as much.

Apart from underwear models, I honestly can’t think of any mainstream fashion stores that use models with boobage.

Maybe there have been one or two in the last few years as they trumpet inclusivity but clothes hang better on models with tiny or no boobs so they are used 99% of the time

My teenage daughter is a size 6 and a lot of shops only start at a size 8.

I don't think it's a feminist issue, it's a commercial issue for the shops in question to decide to whom they want to sell clothes.

What I'm seeing with that dress is a complete lack of cut (my Gran used to be in the garment trade). It's been made as cheaply as possible to what appears to be a t-shirt pattern (as you'd expect given that it's selling for 30 quid), with no attempt to shape the waist or bust. Quite fortuitously for Zara's photographer, it looks good on a small busted model with no curves, which happens to be typical model shape, so that's who they've photographed it on.

In effect what you're seeing is the common phenomenon in the fashion industry of picking a model who would look good in a bin bag - then using that model to attempt to sell bin bags (albeit sequinned ones in this instance).

She doesn't look unhealthily thin, but unfortunately if one has curves, one needs clothes that are properly shaped, and "cutting" is the most challenging and skilled bit of clothes design and whacks the price up. (That's one of the problems with M&S clothes - they're always badly cut and pull under the arms/round the crotch, or baggy over the bottom - they're never quite the same shape you are! Again I think this is why M&S brought Twiggy out of retirement a few years back -a model in their target demographic who can make a bin bag look good).

I LOVE it when companies use more representative models.
So for brands aimed at women over 40 I want to see some older women and more women who are size 14-16 and 5'4".
It's 100% unhelpful to me to see what something looks like on a 6ft 16 year old at Size 8. Not aspirational, I don't aspire to be a child or to be 6ft tall which is a good thing as impossible.

I find more shops now online are showing their clothes on different sized women.

Juells - I am not criticising anyone for being thin. It isn't polite to try and shut people down with that knee-jerk reaction. There are of course naturally thin and very tall women in the general population (I wonder what it is maybe 1 in a thousand? I don't think I've ever met someone with fashion model statistics) but meanwhile nearly all clothing is advertised on remarkably thin models.The teenage girl I know who is modelling and was hospitalised with a stomach complaint ... it was anxiety.

Ah so according to some posters clothes look better on people who are tall and small busted (shame about the rest of us).

So isn’t it time they designed clothes which look good on short people with curves, or average height people with curves, or average people who are just average shaped. Then they could use models that people like my teenage daughter could relate to?!

People come in all shapes and sizes, the majority of whom are not 6ft size 4 with small breasts. So why are those the only ones deemed aspirational/attractive enough to model clothes?

I actually love that dress and if I wasn’t 7 months pregnant would buy and wear it

But yes am tall with a small bust and skinny arms and legs so this sort of thing is right up my alley.

Weirdly as someone with narrow hips I find Zara to be too bulky for me - I guess grass is always greener when it comes to this sort of thing!

What a load of nonsense OP.

Hmmnnnn...I'm touchy because I was certainly as thin as that until I was in my thirties
Me too. At age 18 despite eating the traditional Scottish diet of chips and chocolate I was under 7 stone.

I don’t know any adult women who look even close to that
At work to name just a few , my assistant, who is in her mid 30s . Our department clerk in her eatly 20s . 1 of my partners in her early 50s and plenty of others.

Are you saying that all the women you know have "a good bust"?

I had nothing resembling a "good bust "(except when I was pregnant) until I started putting weight on in my mid 50s.

OP you’re being a bit ridiculous. Of course they are going to use models to sell clothes.

As for bust, as a PP pointed out it is much harder to design for large busts as you need to actually tailor plus every woman is still different. I am guessing you still want to pay sweat shop high st prices for these new mythical clothes?!

That model looks perfectly healthy, I'm in my early twenties and know plenty of women closer to her look than the UK average.

What's really wrong with Zara is now instead of a normal size chart with measurements for bust/waist/hips they ask you to put in your age, height and weight for them to determine the size you need, didn't work for me at all and ended up with a whole order of stuff that wouldn't fit.

I'm not actually interested in exactly where you live, but the fact that you don't know one single thin woman is a shocking indictment of obesity in this country

I agree. I don't know where the OP lives. It is certainly not the case for me.

Wow. She is very thin. My dd is a size 6 and doesn’t look like that.

This is not new. At least Zara make clothes for young people, Me&Em have models that are the age of the children of the women who will be buying the clothes. But can I just point out the model may well have been photoshopped to look healthier than she actually is. The industry is rife with eating disorders. It should be possible to have models somewhere between 'plus sized' and 'very tall and BMI of

I just think that an ‘ideal’ women being very tall, very slim and with small boobs alienates the 95 % of us who aren’t!

I'm 5 ft 2, overweight and big of boob. I don't feel alienated. The fashion companies want to sell their clothes - when you're selling online, you need to make the clothes look good.

In photos, clothes tend to look more flattering on certain body types - tall, slim and small breasted ticks all of those boxes.

Ergo...

I don’t want my dd to never find anyone who looks like (figure) her deemed attractive enough to be a ‘model’.

Eh? Do you mean you worry that your daughter is never going to see anyone with her body shape modelling?

I've never seen anyone with mine modelling. I'm sure many of us haven't. Hopefully your daughter will instead develop a critical awareness of who/what is used to sell products and why.

@electricmonkey ‘I'm nearly 40 and am size 8-10 and 5 ft 8..why do you think that just because I'm getting older I should only see clothes modelled by women much shorter and fatter than me?’

^ you’ve made my point beautifully, thanks, I concur but from the other end of the scale, why do I have to see clothes only modelled by women who are much taller and thinner than me (and everyone I know)?

I know plenty of women who have a healthy BMI, who are slim and active, but no, I don’t know any ‘thin’ women.

‘I’m not interested in where you live’ - you asked where I lived...

“I'm not actually interested in exactly where you live, but the fact that you don't know one single thin woman is a shocking indictment of obesity in this country.”

Is it?

My DD is 5 ft 10, a size 6, just sits at the bottom end of a healthy BMI and that model is much thinner than her...

I didn't think Zara was for teenagers particularly, as I'm in my 40s and find plenty of clothes I like in there.

A580Hojas
Juells - I am not criticising anyone for being thin. It isn't polite to try and shut people down with that knee-jerk reaction.

I wasn't trying to 'shut people down' with a knee-jerk reaction. You proved the point that I made upthread, that it's acceptable to be casually insulting about thin people.

Well that wasn't the point I was making. I was making the point that badly shaped clothes can be photographed in such a way that they look okay on thin women, whereas a model with curves will always show up the flaws in your design. But good design costs - hence if a fashion retailer wants to sell cheap shit and make it look good they're going to pick a thin model, because a curvy model would show the cut up for the cheap shit it was.

Yes, there is a massive problem with unattainable body types and with the encouragement of anorexia in the fashion industry.

But I think often people underestimate the role of economics and the impact of decent design on profit margins. Take cap sleeves for instance - an abomination which hardly suit anyone. Why are they ubiquitous? Because proper sleeves take a lot of fabric - in fact they'll almost double the amount of fabric you need for a top. And they require proper setting in. Hence you've just doubled the costs for raw material and fabrication. Much more of a profit margin if you can persuade women they don't need them.

(Ditto the decade long fashion for sleeveless wedding dresses which for the most part flattered neither thin nor curvy women - but kept wholesale costs down and profit margins up.)