By Shawna Healey
British fast fashion giant, Pretty Little Thing, received praise online after featuring two different sized models in pictures of their collection with Hailey Baldwin. Pretty Little Thing has been setting progressive trends recently by including plus size models in their social media campaigns and photos of stock on their website. Last month, they received backlash after posting an image of two plus sized models in bikinis on Instagram.
Hailey’s long-anticipated collection includes silver metallic blazers which one can wear shirtless, silver glitter mesh jumpsuits and glittery silver cycle shorts. This collection certainly isn’t for those with more demure, simplistic tastes, but it will satisfy anyone with a disco heart, or at least an affinity to all things sparkles and glitter. The collection is fairly expensive, with the priciest item, slouch silver sparkly boots, costing £100. The clothing is more reasonable, especially for outfits for the upcoming festive party season, ranging from £25 to £6o.
Some Twitter users are calling for more brands to follow Pretty Little Thing’s example and to include more diversity when promoting garments, with one Twitter user saying: “This is what every clothing website need, [sic] nothing more annoying than seeing something on only on a plus size model or only on another model whose [sic] petite”.
American rapper, Lil B, also commented on the collection saying: “Shouts out to @OfficialPLT for showing love to women of all sizes + human women from earth and other places!!! Very cool!”
Of course, this is just a step in the right direction, as the brand arguably still need to include more models of different heights and ethnicities in their campaigns, but overall, this is a positive. It shows that fashion retailers are finally actually listening – or at least starting to listen – to their customers.
Including two models in the photos not only satisfies recent needs in diversity in models, but the age-old question of “how will this look on me?”
Pretty Little Thing isn’t the first retailer to do this: American brands such as Madewell and Everlane, as well as Asos, have been doing this for some time. On the Everlane website, however, the user has to elect to see the alternative sizing that they want, whereas Pretty Little Thing shows the models side by side.
The description boxes of the garments only have one of the model’s sizes, however, so if you want to see the proportions of one of the models, you need to click on the “curve” link to do so. This begs the question of why there is still such a concrete separation of the straight sizes and the curve sizes. Nevertheless, this is cause for appreciation and celebration of size diversity and makes a welcome change. It is something we can expect for other collections, and something to demand from other online retailers.
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