The entrance to fashion is still through a Brandy Melville-sized door

On thinness, conventional attractiveness and access to the fashion industry

As another fashion month rolls around with only a tiny percentage of curve models walking the runway (plus-size models made up just 0.8% of castings across the four fashion cities last season), it’s safe to assume that the fashion world has abandoned even the most meagre efforts to appear size-inclusive. It’s unsurprising (and, at this point, boring) that an industry that runs on inaccessibility and exclusivity has extreme thinness as its baseline. As several recent reports confirm, weight discrimination is rife across industries, and there is a staggering correlation between weight and professional success. For people with larger bodies, losing weight can boost salaries as much as obtaining a master’s degree. According to insiders we spoke to within the industry, this prejudice is only amplified within the fashion world. So, just how narrow is the entrance to a career in fashion?