Another New York Fashion Week (NYFW)has reached its close, a titillating, provocative glimpse of designer’s visions of looks that will define spring/Summer 2020. Since the end of the centralized Mercedes-Benz affair that defined the industry’s showcase, NYFW has become a much more level playing field, allowing new designers and models entrée into a previously foreclosed arena. This has led to some significant changes in what (and who) gets displayed on the runways of Gotham, and how the fashion industry discovers them.
At the vanguard of these transitions are people like fashion PR specialist Emma Medeiros, whose work uniting public relations and savvy expertise are making big advances on an evolving trade. Emphasizing plus-size fashions. Emma tells The Hollywood Digest, is important in an industry where plus-size apparel made $21 billion in revenues last year. “Why should plus size fashion be just an afterthought when the majority of women in this country fall into that category?” Emma notes, “we want to be sexy, feminine, and fashionable, and designers, retailers, etcetera, are finally waking up to that fact!”
Although larger style isn’t new in modern fashion, and has even had iconic figures–Marilyn Monroe would have been plus-size today—this sector of the business has often been given short shrift by designers. Emma points to her own experiences as she bumped into the narrow selection available for plus-size shoppers. “I wanted to see real clothes, not just the oversized dresses or blouses that are often larger women’s only options,” Emma recalls, “and I wanted to see real women modeling them.” Building on her education in marketing, and experience with Curves, Cats, and Creams, her pioneering plus-size blog page, Emma launched Medeiros Fashion Public Relations in mid-2015. It’s been forward march ever since.
The goal of her firm is to get plus-size fashion onto an equal plane with the rest of the industry. “We have a right to be represented and to look our best, too,” Emma underscores, and in that effort, she has been making voluminous gains. The company has made visible a largely hidden component of the garment trade, and its clients include such groundbreakers as Boots By Pamela, actress, hostess, and professional plus-size model Sabina Michel, author Janelle Simmons, known as “The Curvy Doc”, and a plus-size model as well, notable Vegas-based model Kristin Leigh Schackmann, and a plethora of other great brands and personalities. “It’s not just plus-size,” Emma rhapsodizes, “But disabled people, seniors, LGBTQ, all across the spectrum,” that need to be represented on today’s catwalks, which until very recently were the near-exclusive province of the uber-skinny and cisgender.
Like all things, the only constant in fashion is change, indeed, that’s the industry’s raison d’etre. For innovators like Emma Medeiros, that quotidian maxim is the focus of everything she does. All the runways should be diverse, says Emma: “To me, fashion is simply FASHION!” All styles, looks, and sizes fit within Emma’s visionary outlook. The industry is listening, at long last.