Marquita Pring
She may be just out of her teens, but she’s no newcomer to the fashion world – Marquita Pring had been modeling for around five years when she had her breakout moment thanks to V Magazine’s plus size issue in 2010.
Even alongside a handful of other gorgeous girls in the issue, Marquita was hard to keep your eyes off of, with her strong stance and subtly seductive stare. And the world hasn’t stopped watching her since – Marquita has appeared everywhere from the Jean Paul Gaultier runway (whose shows are becoming increasingly more inclusive) to Bloomingdale’s catalog. I’m sure we’ll see her featured in even more places as the years go by.
Fluvia Lacerda
http://beautyplusbylianna.blogspot.com/2010/05/plus-size-model-inspiration-fluvia.html
http://www.collegefashion.net/uncategorized/models-101-a-broader-range-of-beauty-3-plus-size-models-shaking-up-the-fashion-world/
Crystal Renn
Probably the most well known plus size model right now, Crystal Renn can be seen gracing top magazine covers, catwalks and advertisements alike.
Renn wasn’t always working as a plus size model, though: When she first started modeling, she struggled with various eating disorders to maintain her size-zero figure. Since overcoming those disorders, she has been featured in numerous articles and has spoken in many interviews about her experiences trying to mold herself into what designers and editors claimed was beautiful.
But before you assume Crystal’s story ends there, or perhaps that her story is what propelled her to fame, take another look. With her thick dark hair and bold brown eyes, the girl is simply breathtaking. Her most recent work includes Jimmy Choo’s bright and eye-catching spring ads, a spot in the swimsuit section of J. Crew’s newest catalog, and an editorial in Vogue Germany. With so many accomplishments under her belt already, it’s clear that Crystal is one to watch.
Plus-Size Model Crystal Renn (23) just released a book about her journey in the modeling world, a journey from size 0 to size 12: “Hungry – A Young Model’s Story: Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves”.
Here’s her summarized story: At age 14, Crystal told that she had to lose 9 inches from her hips in order to be a succesful model. As a result, Crystal went from 175 lbs to 95 lbs in just 2 years. At 16, Crystal dealt with anorexia and was a size 0(US). But then, there was a turning point:
At 17 my body completely rebelled. I couldn’t loose more weight and I realized I was going to die for a job. The next day I was completely chastised by my agency for my size and one agent pulled me aside and said, “There’s an option for you. You can either go plus-size or do commercial work.” And I asked, “What’s plus-size modeling? I’ve never heard of that.” And she said, “Well it means you can be whatever size you want and model.” But she said it was for old women! But for whatever reason, everything made sense and I knew this was the route I had to take. I went and had a salad with salmon and walnuts and olive oil. I gave into what my body needed. I could be healthy and happy and still model., says Crystal.
… and so, she was inspired to share her story in a book:
“I’d like to see everyone take on the attitude that there are women of all different shapes and sizes as `the beauty ideal,’ and that it’s not one type or another. There are women who are naturally a size 2 — you can’t forget them, and that’s discrimination the other way,” Renn said. “All women bring something different to the table and we have to appreciate them all.”Some in the fashion, modeling and magazine industries have been receptive to the idea, she said, noting that she’s still working with her fuller figure in Vogue, Glamour, on the runway with Jean Paul Gaultier and in ads for Dolce & Gabbana. ”I believe there is a cycle to everything — Wall Street, the housing market, and modeling, too. Back in the Victorian days, it was all about a full figure, in the ’50s, it was about the boobs, in the ’80s it was shoulders and in the ’90s it was waifs,” she said. “It can only go up from here.”, says Crystal.
Check out the videos after the jump!
ANTM’s Whitney Thompson: There’s No Soul In Modeling
Two years ago, Whitney Thompson won America’s Next Top Model. While this would be a very cool accomplishment for anyone, it was especially awesome that Thompson won while being branded “plus size,” making her the first plus size model to take the ANTM crown.Thompson still does the modeling thing, but she spends most of her time touring the country as a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorders Association. Despite having never suffered from an eating disorder herself, she says she feels a duty as the fashion industry is “[obviously] affecting people and it does make women feel bad about themselves, or worse.” We love Thompson’s real talk, so we excerpted some of her interview with Sunny Gold over at the Huffington Post.
As much as we love Karl, we have to say we felt the same way about his V Magazine spread:
Karl Lagerfeld two years ago was saying the only people who care about plus size are the fat mummies sitting on their couches eating crisps. Now he’s shooting the plus issue for V, are you kidding? Really V, you forgot about that? I mean, it was a huge issue. And he has a Chanel line for plus girls and Crystal Renn’s in it and it’s so fake, it’s so phony and people just jump on the bandwagon. So I think it’s important to do research and be smart about the companies that you do support.On “naturally skinny” models:
The majority of girls who do runway shows are 16 and under. Agencies and designers look for girls who haven’t hit puberty yet and so we ship these girls in from Russia and Brazil and they’re 14 and they don’t speak English and these are the girls that I go to castings with. That’s fine, they’re all great and young and “naturally skinny,” when they’re 14 — most people are. But then once they hit puberty, 16 and 17, they have to do drugs, they’re doing cocaine, they’re smoking cigarettes all day every day, they’re doing the lemonade cleanse because if they don’t then they get shipped back to wherever they came from, and that’s just how the industry works.
A lot of girls get depressed, some girls commit suicide, some girls starve to death, literally, and we kind of just don’t pay attention to it in the industry. We don’t really talk about it, but it’s very common.We’ve heard the sample size argument again and again, and each time it makes us angry:
The samples are tiny to save money. Because when you make a sample, say there’s a Versace gown and it’s hand-beaded and it costs Donatella $40,000 to do. And she makes it for a size six, OK a model’s going wear it on the runway and it probably will never get worn again. Well, wouldn’t it be smarter for her to make it in a double 0? Because she’s saving all this fabric, which means she’s saving beading, she’s saving work on the dress and it’s cheaper. She’s saving a lot of money by doing it at that size. And that’s I think where it started and basically where it stayed. It goes back to models having no rights or say in the industry and instead of fitting the dress to the model, they fit the model to the dress.Even though Thompson continues to model, she despises the industry:
Oh yeah, models get treated like crap. Worse than anyone. We get fed last, we don’t sleep, they treat you like nothing. When you think about it, everyone thinks modeling is so glamorous, but you don’t get to say what you wear, you don’t get to say how you look, what your hair color is, what length it is, where you live, what you do — you have no voice at all. And the bookers — because I was a straight-size model growing up in high school, and my hips were always one inch too big — and, yeah, you have 45-year-old men saying, “You’re too fat.” You’re a teenage girl. It’s really disgusting. It’s an awful industry and, yeah, there is no soul in modeling.http://www.styleite.com/media/whitney-thompson-interview/
Barbara Brickner
Practically a fashion veteran, Barbara Brickner has been modeling for over ten years. She is currently represented by agencies all over the world and regularly appears in international magazines and campaigns.
This Seattle native has been dubbed the “Cindy Crawford of Plus Size Models” thanks to her natural beauty and, accordingly, versatility. Barbara can be seen in catalogs for Nordstrom and Macy’s, among others, and was notably the first plus size model to grace a billboard in Times Square, which was for her consistent client Liz Claiborne.
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