A woman dropped by her modelling agency at size 10 for being ‘too big’ has launched her own agency to help ‘normal-sized’ women break into the fashion industry.
The UK model, Saffi Karina, “failed” to maintain a figure consistent with the standards of a thin-obsessed fashion industry when “womanhood ensued” and she was told her curves disqualified her from continuing her career as a model, she told the Evening Standard.
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“I had only been working for a couple of years, and really loving it, when they dropped me. But I have 41-inch hips — they are pure bone, there is nothing I can do about them, they aren’t going anywhere. I had to work with what I’ve got,” she said.
After working as a plus-size model Karina has gone on to found ‘The Curve Project’, holding workshops alongside fashion photographers, make-up artists and stylists to show normal-size women how to make it as a models with an aim to “champion curves and diversity within fashion and beyond”.
Karina’s project will endorse a positive body image and promote role models that challenge the idea that ‘thin’ is the only way to get a foot in the fashion threshold.
With similar aspirations for the Australian industry, CEO of Australia’s first plus-size modelling agency BGM Darrianne Donnelly says good on her.
Operating for 17 years, BGM represents Australian models from size 12 and up representing the “average Australian woman”.
When people meet most of her models they are often shocked, saying they “don’t look big enough to be plus-size”.
“What we do in this agency is try to reflect authentic women of all shapes and sizes, and people are often very surprised to learn what plus-size actually means in the fashion industry” Ms Donnelly tells aww.com.au.
Like Saffi Karina, Darrianne’s agency represents women who used to be represented by ‘traditional’ modelling agencies, but were unwilling to “punish” their bodies to succumb to pressure to be thin laid on by the industry.
One Australian recently signed to the agency had been modelling since the age of 12, but quit at the age of 17 weighing about 59kg and a towering 182cm tall.
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“Living in the Big Apple under the guidance of her agency she could see by looking that by staying in this industry she would have to do horrendous things to her body,” Darrianne said.
When the model was at the peak of her career she developed dangerous eating habits that led to being dangerously underweight and even losing hair.
“Now she’s just blown away — healthy, beautiful and getting plenty of work.”
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