Velvet d'Amour: Fashion Needs To Catch Up To Women Of Size

Frockwriter tracked down plus-size model, actress and fashion photographer Velvet d'Amour to talk about curvy girls' place in the biz and the recent Vogue Italia cover featuring a trio of "bigger" beauties. D'Amour remarked, "The way I see it is, that we need fashion to catch up to women of size, in order to make a stunning FASHION orientated editorial. If you were to take the average Vogue Italia editorial, and attempt to dress these same models in the clothes, best of luck to the stylist to find their size."

She adds that fashion is all about pushing the limits -- "The true meaning of FASHION in all likelihood it encompasses and revels in Change, in decadence, in obscurity versus ordinary, in risk-taking. While fashion beckons followers and innovation creates fashion, it's those who deviate from accepted norms who create so much of our fashion from the get go."

D'Amour also doesn't buy into the whole plus-size models make women fat argument:

The reality that cultural pressures are one of the factors involved in eating disorders cannot be dismissed, though the notion that someone leafing through a magazine witnessing a plus size model has a sudden urge to down several thousand pizzas in the hopes of gaining a few pounds, is rather laughable at best. Were the inclusion of plus size models to spur viewers to gain weight, the inverse of that logic would mean (given the dearth of rail thin models in magazines), that the entire world would be emaciated, versus fat.

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I don't look to fashion magazines for advice on health, I look at them for fashion. We need to start looking beyond the simplistic and dig deeper. If you want to have a health debate, then let's tackle mental health, which is the stimulus, more often than not, affecting one's physical health.

Take a look at a few pictures of d'Amour below. And head over to Frockwriter to read the rest.