Plus-size models gain new ground

At 31, Johanna Dray is breathtakingly beautiful, with shoulder-length black hair and big, dark eyes. When she stands up, however, she reveals what has kept her out of most major fashion magazines and catwalks in Europe, including this month’s Paris fashion shows: a voluptuous figure clad, one recent evening, in chic black pants.

"The fashion industry is still really snobby," said Dray, who became one of France’s first plus-size models a decade ago, and remains among the country’s most successful. "There are only a handful of designers who have used big women for their shows. It’s still pretty closed." Whether Europe’s top fashion houses will ever embrace the big-is-beautiful look after the controversy now raging over anorexic models is still anybody’s guess. Last month, Madrid’s major fashion show applied weight limits to models for the first time, barring five superthin girls from joining the catwalk.

Milan passed codes requiring models to carry medical certificates indicating they are healthy, starting next February. In London, Britain’s Minister for Women Tessa Jowell urged the fashion industry to boycott waiflike models and backed a campaign started by several fashion leaders to overhaul a media-driven image of size-zero beauty. And in France, the Health Ministry is debating a series of voluntary measures to regulate the fashion industry, including a charter promoting a more full-figured look. Fueling European concerns is not only the health of rail-thin models but also fashion’s celebration of slenderness that may tilt vulnerable young women toward anorexia.

"A few years ago, people would find this argument exaggerated — anorexia isn’t created by the fashion industry," said Dr. Philippe Jeammet, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Rene Descartes Paris V, in the French capital. "But anorexics are easily influenced by the images they receive from society." Still, there is little indication of a revolution in sight. Fashion "cannot be regulated," Didier Grumbach, president of the French Fashion Federation, told the Agence France-Presse news agency recently — summing up, observers say, conventional wisdom and the sentiments of many in the industry. If France followed Madrid’s efforts to ban superthin models, Grumbach said, "Everybody would laugh."

"I don’t think things will change in the foreseeable future," agreed Sylvie Fabregon, head of the Contrebande modeling agency in Paris, which has a plus-size branch. "Remember Twiggy?" she asked, recalling the 1960s supermodel. "People have always liked skinny models." There are scattered exceptions. Fashion designer John Galliano has occasionally used large models — including Dray, who appeared in his Paris fashion show last year. But she was shocked by a subsequent spread in Vogue magazine of the show — which also featured extremely tall and short models, as well as chunky ones. "Their theme was something like ‘Freak is chic,’ " said Dray, sipping Diet Coke at a restaurant across from the Dior fashion house in Paris on a recent evening. "I was really insulted. I don’t feel like I’m a freak." At 5 feet 9 inches, and wearing the equivalent of a size 16 — the pear-shaped model declines to say exactly how much she weighs but appears to the casual observer to be somewhere between "generous” and normal — she is certainly not fat by American standards, but perhaps a bit heavy to the ever weight-conscious French. Indeed, Dray is used to stares from strangers in France — but not for being a "freak." Photographers would follow her as a young fashion student around Paris.

Finally, one shooter approached her in the subway and asked if she modeled. "I told him: ‘Look, I’m not skinny,’ " she recalled. "He said: ‘That’s exactly what we’re looking for.’ " Her first client was the ready-to-wear brand Giani Forte for plus-size women, which still uses Dray in its catalogs. She has since branched out to model for catalogs in Belgium and Germany, and appeared in several major magazines. An Elle magazine special on full-figured women featured Dray wearing nothing but jewels. "I think the fact that I work as a model, that I appear in magazines, really reassures many women," Dray said. "It sends them the signal they have the right to be themselves."

More recently, she has been solicited by France’s news media to talk about haute couture’s unstated but widely practiced boycott of large models. "It’s really good that people are saying stop," Dray said of the Madrid and Milan crackdowns. "But when things really start to change is when a magazine like Vogue uses a girl like me on its cover." Expanding waistlines may help drive the change. Obesity is becoming a fact of life in Europe, as it is in the United States. A survey released last month by France’s TNS Sofres polling agency, for example, found that 12.4 percent of French adults were obese — nearly a 10 percent jump since 2003. Obesity is even more prevalent in countries like Britain and Italy. And the notoriously cigarette-friendly French lost a prop against obesity this month, when the prime minister announced a ban on smoking in schools, offices and public building starting in February, with restrictions kicking in at restaurants, dance clubs and some bars in 2008.

This may finally be the time when they re-examine their attitudes on weight too — but don’t hold your breath. At Cazak, an elegant plus-size boutique off the Champs-Elysees, store owner Karen Hansen said her mushrooming clientele includes wives of top politicians and businessmen. But so far, she says, only one famous designer — Gianfranco Ferre — carries a ready-to-wear brand for larger-size women. "They’re like ostriches — pretending that the problem doesn’t exist so that maybe it will go away," she says of other designers. But in Germany, model agency owner Wolf Lueck believes mentalities are progressing. "We’re seeing healthier-looking models in Germany," he said. "It’s a little odd to have these pale, skinny girls — totally flat, with no butts. Unsexy." Still, the full-figured look mostly showcases catalogs and not the haute couture world. But fashion is fashion, Lueck notes, and it likes new trends. "Who knows?" he mused. "It might be over with these thin, thin girls. And maybe the real woman will come back."

http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2006/ 10/15/LVGGQLMRMD 1.DTL

About Editor-in-Chief, Madeline Figueroa-Jones

Madeline hails from a close-knit NYC family and started her plus size modeling career with a spread in BBW magazine. In early 2003 Figueroa was selected to appear as the spokes model for the "Hips, Heels & Curves" Fashion Show, continuing on to casting director for the Dangerous Curves 2003/2004 Tour. After appearing on several television segments including Aqui Y Ahora for Univision she began reaching out to the plus size community by serving as a moderator for VenusDivas.com, Empowerment Editor for AmaZeMagazine.com. Madeline and her husband Luke reside in the Battery Park city area of NY and operate lucaspictures.net.

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