Celina Ralph for Sunday Times Style UK Suggests Regression on Larger Size Models

Buzz-cut model Celina Ralph does business class, styled by Verity Parker in masculine suiting, crisp shirts and a tie for images by Ina Levy [IG].

It could be that fashion comes to rest around Celina Ralph’s body type as much more aspirational than in the past. And Ralph is in good company with shrinking-bodies models on Ozympic-style drugs. She cites her concerns generally on this topic:

“We have to be careful of tokenism,” she says. “Of course we celebrate when designers and brands celebrate women of different sizes, but there has to be longevity, and we definitely haven’t got there yet. What we need in this industry is variation — we need all different versions of beauty.”

Factually-speaking, about 50% of luxury sales in clothing are coming from 1% of the population. Very, very few of those women are not model size, and they’ve always been thin.

We have more than four-years of luxury brands featuring significant numbers of larger-size models on the runway with little or no financial payback. Celina Ralph may be the body type all brands can embrace in today’s business climate, also bodies like Ashley Graham’s, who is a tour de force far beyond her body size.

After all, many of us are trying to save democratic governments and core human rights in our politics. Our focus is just not on the psychological demands of these women.