Project Runway: When Fashion is a Hate Crime

Abject fat phobia and bigotry was clearly demonstrated by Project Runway over the last two episodes. Two weeks ago, a contestant was eliminated after judges complained that her paper dress made her model look plus sized. Mentor Tim Gunn asked the designer if her model was "bigger" to start with, which is to say that being bigger than a broomstick is a handicap in the fashion world. More hatefully, host Heidi Klum chided that the model looked like a "fat Mini Mouse" in her dress.

In this week's show, contestants were challenged to make an outfit "for the everyday woman." The models for the garments were the mothers and sisters of the contestants, who had to design for someone other than their own relative. Two of the "average women" were thin, one was truly average, and the rest were decidedly plus sized. The larger ladies probably had bust and hip measurements over 50 inches. Of course, when the contestants took turns at selecting models, the thinnest were chosen first and the fattest were chosen last.

These last chosen are in excellent company. In this country, the average woman aged 18-25 has measurements at bust, waist, and hip respectively of 38 - 32 - 41 inches, and at ages 36-45 the average woman measures 41 - 31 - 43 inches. These dimensions correspond to standardized pattern sizes 16 and 18, respectively. Ready-to-wear sizes, thanks to the marketing concept of vanity sizing (if you put ridiculously tiny numbers on clothes, women are more likely to buy them), for off the rack apparel are so inconsistent as to be utterly worthless.

So half of the RTW market, by definition, is for plus size apparel. Yet the dirty little secret of the fashion world is that designers have no idea how to design for, much less fit larger women.

This was painfully clear on this week's Project Runway. The everyday outfits were supposed to reflect the taste and wishes of the models, and they were supposed to be "fashion forward." The best of the outfits produced for the plus sized women looked no better than a typical offering from an average fat women's budget apparel catalogue, and the worst were utterly appalling. Among the worst was a dress made by a contestant who was frankly hostile and rude toward the mom who was his "client;" she was in tears because he completely disregarded her requests and suggestions for style features. When this dress was modeled in the final fashion show, judge Michael Kors cracked that it looked like "Comme des Garcon goes to the Amish country." Let me tell you, most Amish women sew beautifully, and would not be caught dead in such an ugly, ill-fitting, and poorly made garment. He would have been closer to the mark had he said, "It looks like an Amish lady sewed while on crack."

So why did the Project Runway contestants do such a poor job of making clothing for these "average" women, who by definition are plus sized and make up at least half of the market for RTW apparel? Part of the reason may be simple size bigotry. We live in a society in which frank hatred of fat people is rampant and largely unchallenged. Size bigotry is the last socially acceptable form of discrimination. We are bombarded daily by thousands of media images of unusually thin people who are portrayed positively as attractive and successful, yet we only rarely see images of fat people depicted in a positive manner. Most fat characters on television and in movies, for example, are portrayed as poor, stupid, mentally ill, hapless, either sexless or oversexed (go figure), and generally undesirable and unsuccessful. Most fashion designers are never exposed to a positive, artistic aesthetic that includes large sized designs. They don't know what big and beautiful looks like. They only recognize thin and beautiful. While there are plenty of images of big, beautiful women in art, there are virtually none in the fashion world. Most fashion designers do not develop an eye for the lines, textures, shapes, proportions, colors and other design features that make plus size clothing attractive.

In our own lives, however, most of us know fat people who are attractive, successful, creative, loving, productive and well loved members of our society, including our friends, co-workers, and mothers and sisters. Clearly, Project Runway contestants love their moms and sisters and would not want to humiliate them. So why did they?

Here is another dirty little secret of the fashion world. Fashion designers simply do not know how to design for average, much less plus sized women. In design schools, half of the U.S. population is completely disregarded. Most commercial dressforms used for designing and draping patterns and most live models are a standardized pattern size 10 or 12, with bust - waist - hips of 32-25-34.5 to 34-26.5-36, with a B cup size. Most fashion models weigh about 125 pounds at most and are close to 6 feet tall. Neither the forms nor the models have any of the 80 or so nameable figure variations that are common to real women of all sizes, such as a sway back, dowager's hump, any cup size larger than a B, or a short back waist length. Exaggerated tallness and thinness is a given aesthetic in the fashion world. Most design students never learn to fit real people. If they learn to fit at all, they practice on other students, who are likely to be young and thin.

Actually, sizing for plus sized RTW is merely an extrapolation from large sizes; typically, two inches are added to bust and hips for each size increase, and other dimensions are extrapolated without regard to the form of actual large sized womens' bodies. This is why plus sized, RTW clothes are usually too big through the shoulders, armscyes, and necklines, too long in the sleeves, and too small across the hips. Like most RTW, they actually fit no one well.

The Project Runway contestants who designed for the plus sized moms and sisters had probably never before made a garment for a larger woman. It's no wonder that the contestants performed so badly, or that some felt hostile about being asked to design for a large woman. They had no idea what to do.

In the fashion world, plus sizes are low budget and low prestige. Flip through any catalogue that sells plus size apparel and ask yourself, "What assumptions have the manufacturers of these garments made about large women in order to market to them?" The answers are not flattering. Most of these clothes are either drab and matronly or extremely bright, faddish, and over embellished, with very little in between. They are cheap and poorly made, and seem to be sized for women who are large-busted and small hipped with arms the length of an orangutan's.

All of this was evident in the show's clips of the contestants supposedly making these garments. Of course, Project Runway, like all so-called reality shows, has little to do with reality and is merely entertainment. In the filmed clips, the contestants were shown taking what appeared to be bust, waist, and hip measurements, even though many, many more measurements are actually needed to either flat draft a pattern or to pad up a dressform to drape a design. Then the show showed them "fitting" the garments on the skinny dressforms. What for? They might as well have hung them on wire coat hangers. Actually, they were doing what others in the fashion and RTW world typically do: they just guessed at the fit, because they were disinterested in the shape and size of the real women for whom they made the clothes. They simply disregarded the needs of the women before them. The contestants and the show's producers created an opportunity to redeem themselves of the previous week's hate crime, but even if they wanted to, they were not technically up to the task.

In contrast, the custom dressmaking process embraces and celebrates the rich variety of human forms and personal aesthetics. The complicated steps that a custom dressmaker takes to make an evening gown, for example, for a tiny woman are exactly the same as for a very large woman. This process does not take a day, either. We know exactly how to design for and fit women of all shapes and sizes, and the process is inclusive, not exclusive.

When it comes to large sizes, ready-to-wear fashion is so exclusive as to be a hate crime.