Sample Sizes Must Be Made Bigger!
15-05-2025
The campaign aims to challenge the industry’s approach to body image and the impact it has on models and women in general.
For decades it has been the norm to create tiny sample sizes worn by models that are no bigger than a UK size 8 and are over 5’8” tall. The campaign has called on the British Fashion Council, organisers of London Fashion Week, to help lead the way in promoting healthy role models at the bi-annual event, which starts on the 16th September.
The WEP said: “Designers churn out sample sizes so small that models have to starve themselves to fit into them.”
The #NoSizeFitsAll campaign makes 4 asks:
- We are calling on the British Fashion Council to commit to ensuring that fashion designers showing at London Fashion Week show 2 different sample sizes in every range, one of which must be a UK size 12 and above;
- We are campaigning for a change in the law so that fashion models below a BMI of 18.5 must be seen by one of an accredited list of medical health professionals, and deemed well before a modelling agency is allowed to employ or reemploy them.
- We are asking for a commitment from UK-based fashion publications to include a minimum of one plus-size (UK size 12 or above) editorial fashion spread in every issue.
- We believe that body image awareness must be made a mandatory and core component of personal, social, health education (PSHE) in schools, with a specific focus on media depictions of beauty, delivered by trained experts as opposed to teachers who specialise in unrelated disciplines.
WEP commented that eating disorders affect 1.6 million people in the UK, 89% of whom are female. It is time for the fashion industry to recognise that it can and must effect change in this area. And with just a week until the opening of London Fashion Week, WEP stated that the British Fashion Council (BFC) “has got to raise their game”.
http://www.womensequality.org.uk/why_nsfa
