The Fashion Swamp: Body Diversity What? Where? Who?
Covering London Fashion Week gave Divya a 'familiar, sludgy feeling'
News & Reviews Magazine
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The piece you’re reading now is by Divya Venkataraman. Divya is a writer, editor and presenter based in London. She writes across fashion, culture, travel and sustainability for publications like The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar and more. Previously, she was an editor at Vogue Australia, GQ and Vogue Living, and also contributed regularly to Vogue Australia’s print editions. She has also been a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald. Her work has appeared in publications such as British Vogue, The Australian and Meanjin.
Divya writes for News & Reviews Magazine each month. These are her last pieces, from the August and September editions:
Attending fashion week is a mindfuck. It’s a privilege, for sure, but it’s a privilege that is inspiring and frustrating in equal measure. You wonder why so many people—smart, wonderful people—subject themselves to this kind of voluntary ritual humiliation, where their worth is tallied up based on their follower count, or the publication they work for, or literally just their face. But then, suddenly, you’re up close to a sequinned gown on the runway, watching the way it catches the light and how it makes a model move, from her swaying neck to her waggling fingers, because she’s actually having fun, and you remember it’s worth it. It’s at once peacockery and showmanship and vulgarity and it’s an amazing exercise in community. Especially in a city like London, where I’ve been based for the past few months, and where the work of Black and brown creatives continues to constantly amaze me.
This year, I went to a few shows at London Fashion Week to cover them for Vogue India, and afterwards, after I had returned my loaned dresses and rubbed the callouses out of my raw soles, I noticed a familiar sludgy feeling. I felt simultaneously self-conscious in my body and hyper aware of other people’s. It was the after effect, I diagnosed, of constantly seeing one certain kind of body type—young, gleaming, rail-thin—for multiple days in a row. One thing was very clear at London Fashion Week, and at New York Fashion Week which happened before that: all the models were thin thin. Did designers forget about body diversity? Or did they discard it because it didn’t serve their purposes anymore, now that they’d gotten their kudos when it was ‘trendy’, and they feel that that particular wave has crested?
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