Visitors to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on Friday afternoon to watch Sinéad O’Dwyer’s Fashion in Motion show would have encountered something a little different. The cast of performers and models wore everything from underwear to skirt suits and sequins, and sometimes danced interpretively on the catwalk to a performance by the band Jeanie and The White Boys, but most notably came in all shapes and sizes.
O’Dwyer’s work has pushed against fashion’s insistence on a thin body type since she appeared at London fashion week in ۲۰۲۱. If most brands make the samples for clothes shown on the catwalk based on a size ۴-۸, she uses a size ۱۸. She has won awards for her work, as well as celebrity fans including Cardi B and Björk.
Friday’s event – unlike a lot of fashion shows – was open to the public, who could buy a ticket for £۵. O’Dwyer says this more inclusive attitude suits her brand. “In terms of the ethos [of the brand], it’s a lot more appropriate for everyone than the luxury fashion system, which actually doesn’t really want everyone.”
For a few years, O’Dwyer was part of a wider shift towards body diversity in fashion – with Paloma Elsesser the first plus-size model of the year at the Fashion Awards in ۲۰۲۳, for example – but progress has stalled. The Size Inclusivity Report, produced by Vogue Business every season since ۲۰۲۳, found that for autumn/winter ۲۰۲۶, ۹۷.۶% of models were “straight-size”, or a UK ۴-۸.
Fashion’s focus on the thin has been controversial since the early ۲۰th century, with women’s bodies long subject to trends – slight with a small bust as an ideal in the flapper ۲۰s, slender and leggy in the youth-obsessed ۶۰s, athletic and curvy in the aerobicised ۸۰s. The current rollback to thinness can be seen as part of a wider trend away from diversity.
“It coincided with Trump coming into power,” says Jeanie Annan-Lewin, a stylist. “There are fewer people of any minority across the board and that’s the same thing that’s happening in fashion.”
Emma Matell, the casting director who worked on O’Dwyer’s show and has also worked for Lueder and Tolu Coker, agrees. “It’s becoming more and more apparent that we’re back to wanting women to both metaphorically and physically take up less space,” she says.
The impact of GLP-۱ weight-loss drugs is also part of the story. “[They] mean cultural figures are shrinking, the general population, in many respects, is shrinking,” says Lucy Maguire, the features director at Vogue Business. “It’s brought back a reverence for thinness that was always underlying in fashion.”
London remains the one fashion week that consistently features more body diversity – even if straight-size models still made up ۹۲.۷%, according to the Size Inclusivity Report. As well as O’Dwyer, Mark Fast and Chopova Lowena will probably have a more diverse range at their shows in September.
“Sinéad and a few other young designers are carrying a huge amount of effort that the rest of the industry seems unwilling to make,” says Matell. “But I think that also comes down to the rebellious spirit of London. To me, being inclusive is the most punk thing you can do.”
The difficulty and cost of changing long-established manufacturing methods to make clothes in bigger sizes is central to the problem of body diversity in fashion. But O’Dwyer believes even just seeing models of all sizes on the luxury stage has power. “Luxury is very deeply embedded in everything, even if you don’t know anything about luxury,” she says. “That’s what I definitely experienced as a young person. I didn’t know why I wanted to be size ۶, but I really wanted to be size ۶.”
Friends Elenor Rowland and Orla McEvoy, both ۱۴, watched Friday’s show – their first interaction with fashion. Rowland said she was glad for the diverse casting “because a lot of the time there’s not much representation for different body types … It probably makes lots of people think: ‘Oh, I’m not that size. Maybe I should be.’”
In the UK, size ۱۶ is the average. Annan-Lewin sees fashion’s continued focus on the very thin to be a missed commercial opportunity. “I find it really strange that we just go ‘no, if you’re plus-size, you don’t have any disposable income, you don’t want to buy anything luxury. You just need to go and get fast fashion,’” she says.
Maguire points to a survey conducted by Vogue Business that found “۳۴% of mid-size and ۶۸% of plus-size respondents felt alienated by the fashion industry due to their size, compared to ۱۷% of straight-size respondents … Brands need to represent different bodies in order to not alienate this consumer who has really huge spending power.”
To change things, all argue that financial support for brands trying to increase size diversity is needed. Annan-Lewin is clear it’s time for action. “I feel like I talk about things all the time, and it’s great, but water is wet,” she says. “What are we going to do about this? If we can’t get that fatphobia out of here, then nothing is going to move forward in any way, shape or form.”
