Why Tim Gunn’s Take on Plus Fashion Falls Flat

Lately, fashion guru and Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn has been making headlines with his essays on . Brands and bloggers alike have been quick to praise Gunn for speaking out against the clear lack of size diversity in the fashion industry but there’s something about these essays that don’t sit well with me as a plus size person. Although it’s important for this conversation to be had on a mainstream level and he makes some good points, it scares me that the person leading the charge seems to still have a personal bias against fat bodies.

On October 28, Gunn took to to once again share that the fashion industry needs to be more inclusive. He loses me quickly when he says he wants to erase the term plus size — a label that simply exists to help women size 12+ find clothing in their size. When I interviewed 16 plus size folks back in February about why we need to keep the plus, my goal was really to force the very loud voices on this issue (who are mostly, like Gunn, not plus size) to listen to people within the community. People who want to stop using the term plus size usually want to do so because they don’t want to be associated with fat bodies. Models who want to drop the plus often say things like, “I want to be labeled as beautiful†without realizing that you can both fat and beautiful. I think this concept is also lost on Gunn.

Plus size people are not looking for clothing to change the way we look; we are looking for clothes that fit the bodies we currently have. I don’t need another clothing line that claims to be inclusive and doesn’t go above a size 16. I don’t need another brand toting their plus size options but the measurements on their size chart would fit an XL at best. I don’t need vanity sizing. I don’t need “slimming†cuts. I need actual options that fit fat bodies.

Gunn points out a statistic that I’ve also seen a lot in the news lately: the average woman now wears between a 16 and 18. This statistic is of course no shock to me but I know that it may be for others and I am glad that it’s forcing people to confront their own biases or views on beauty. But I do have an issue with the way that this statistic is used by Gunn and others. There seems to be a lack of recognition that women who wear sizes larger than 18 exist and still need clothes. The way this stat is thrown around, it seems like folks fall to recognize that average means middle and not end. Fashion doesn’t just need to be expanded to go up to an 18; in fact, we really need to be looking at a much wider lens for inclusivity than that because the use of this statistic still ends up rendering size 20+ women invisible.

Gunn claims that dressing a size 16 to straight size designers is “complicated, difficult, and different.†He says, “The fashion industry works from standards established decades ago. Habits are hard to break. From the runway, to magazines, pictures of how clothes are supposed to look, how women are supposed to look, are set. And it all revolves around thinness.†This one of the few quotes from Gunn’s essay that made me give a verbal, “YESSSSS†but then he loses me when he adds, “…our clothing can create an optical illusion that helps us look taller and slimmer. But, done wrong, we look worse than if we were, well, naked.â€

There is nothing wrong with my body so there’s no need to create an optical illusion. I’m short and fat and that’s okay. My body looks great whether I am wearing clothes or not. There is no right or wrong way to be fashionable as long as what you’re wearing makes YOU happy. This is the crucial part of what Gunn is missing. While trying to change the fashion industry, he’s really still asking to replicate the same beauty standard of striving towards thinness just with “slimming†options up to size 18. This isn’t enough. In order to really transform the fashion industry, we have to tackle the stigma against fat bodies; a stigma that Gunn himself buys into.

In his original essay for the , Gunn called Ashley Nell Tipton’s winning Project Runway line into question saying, “I’ve never seen such hideous clothes in my life: bare midriffs; skirts over crinoline, which give the clothes, and the wearer, more volume; see-through skirts that reveal panties; pastels, which tend to make the wearer look juvenile; and large-scale floral embellishments that shout ‘prom.’ Her victory reeked of tokenism.†Tipton, a size 20+ woman herself, designed a collection full of bold and unapologetic apparel that plus size women are literally begging for. We can find plenty of the ‘slimming’ silhouettes that Gunn is calling for but we want volume; we want see-through skirts; we want bold prints. We want the option to stand out and make a statement in the same way that our straight size counterparts have. We want a designer who listens to us.

There’s no one way to dress a plus size body and every aesthetic deserves to have options. Those options won’t fit everyone’s personal style and that’s okay because something that may not be your favorite, may be someone else’s dream outfit. Straight size fashion has tons of different styles available to them. The assumption that plus size women all want to dress the same has got to stop. And Gunn has to stop reinforcing this.

Fat bodies need to be seen as beautiful without apology before we will be treated as fashion equals. There’s still a lot more work to be done before we get to that point. At the end of the day, you need to look in the mirror and feel good about you. Fuck what Tim Gunn thinks about what you wear. Wear what you want.

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