Earlier this month, I was standing backstage at the Schiaparelli show in Paris talking to the designer Daniel Roseberry about his collection and the way he had used trompe l’oeil — bigger shoulders, neoprene padding at the hips — to create an hourglass figure.
“Like this?” I asked, pointing to a model in a gown accessorized with what resembled shelflike hip bones.
“Oh, well, not that one,” Mr. Roseberry said. “Those are actually her hips.” Her bones were more than prominent enough, all on their own.
Of all the trends at the fall runway shows, including the uptick in fur (or fur-alike) clothing, the rise of clothing with built-in power curves and the preponderance of black leather, the single most ubiquitous one was the worst: the erosion of size inclusivity.
Ironically, as fashion embraces (and creates) faux womanly figures by design, the actual bodies inside the clothes are shrinking. After reaching a peak in 2021, when Paloma Elsesser became the first plus-size model to appear on the cover of American Vogue, body diversity has taken a clear downward trajectory, decreasing pretty much every season.
“The pendulum went one way, and now it’s swinging full force the other way,” said David Bonnouvrier, a founder of DNA Model Management.
According to the Vogue Business fall 2025 size inclusivity report, of 8,703 looks in 198 shows and presentations, only 2 percent were midsize (defined as U.S. size 6 to 12) and only 0.3 percent were plus-size. (Plus-size and midsize models are also known as “curve models.”) This was worse than the representation in the spring shows, which took place in September and October and included 0.8 percent plus-size looks and 4 percent midsize.
Indeed, data from Tagwalk, the fashion search engine, reveals that in the last show season, 16 percent fewer collections included even one curve model compared with the preceding season. Of the 20 most viewed shows, only four included three such models: Hermès (out of 61 total looks), Givenchy (out of 52), Coach (45) and Marni (41). Three!
“Change starts from the top, and the top is the top 20 most viewed and most searched brands,” said Alexandra Van Houtte, the founder of TagWalk. Where they lead, others follow. And apparently, this time it was backward.
Case in point: Nina Ricci, a label that under the designer Harris Reed has been known for its inclusivity, featured only one midsize model — out of 38. By contrast, Mr. Reed’s debut Nina Ricci show, in March 2023, opened with Precious Lee, a plus-size model, and included three more plus-size women in the show.
When asked about the change, a spokeswoman for Nina Ricci said that competition for the limited number of curve models meant that the label wasn’t able to book them early enough to allow runway samples to be tailored to their bodies. Nonetheless, she said, size diversity “continues to be an important subject for us.”
The issue is not simply that there are fewer curve models on the runway; the thin models seem to be getting thinner. Even in a world that has long prized the idea of bodies as coat hangers, there were more visible rib cages, jutting collarbones and daisy chains of vertebrae than have been seen since the concept of BMI and model health was introduced by the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2012. Given the documented connection between social media and eating disorders, especially among young people — and the way runway shows have become a mass form of public entertainment — such images have potentially dangerous repercussions.
Hillary Taymour, the founder and designer of Collina Strada, one of the few labels in New York to include plus-size as well as midsize models in its shows (having done so since its first show in 2017), blamed Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs for the phenomenon.
“All the plus-size girls went to midsize because of Ozempic, and all the midsize girls went to standard size,” Ms. Taymour said. “Everyone’s on it. It’s a drug that has created a skinnier industry and a new trend that skinnier and skinnier is better.”
It is true that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Ozempic for weight loss in 2021 coincided with the shrinking runway trend. However, Mr. Bonnouvrier of DNA Models said he believed something deeper was going on — that the swing away from body diversity was part of a general swing away from social progressivism.
“As much as anything, this is a cultural conversation,” Mr. Bonnouvrier said. With respect to model inclusivity, he said, brands “are walking away because of what is going on in the United States.”
Sara Ziff, the founder of the Model Alliance, an organization that champions models’ rights, agreed. Extreme thinness among models is “not really new — this kind of thing is cyclical,” she said. But this time around, she added, “it seems to echo the current political climate.”
“It’s frustrating to see the industry take a step back,” Ms. Ziff said. “When those on the creative side of fashion could be using their platform to share progressive values, it seems like many are acquiescing rather than pushing back.”
Peer pressure to diversify the runway in the wake of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements led to a noticeable shift in conceptions of beauty, Mr. Bonnouvrier said. But with D.E.I. now under scrutiny as part of the Trump administration’s war on wokeness, its fashion expression, including diversity of size, is under pressure. A retreat to the most conservative and traditional approach for showcasing clothes means a retreat to old-fashioned stereotypes of beauty. And that generally translates to homogenous, largely white and thin models, despite the fact that such body types are not representative of the fashion-buying population at large.
As Ms. Taymour said, there’s a good business case to be made for demonstrating clearly that you “relate to all types of your customer base,” including all sizes. Sarah Burton, the new creative director of Givenchy and the former creative director of Alexander McQueen, said much the same, noting that she wanted Givenchy “to celebrate the multiplicity, beauty and strength of womanhood, free of narrow definitions of how we should look or see ourselves.”
Yet the trend continues to move in the opposite direction.
Mr. Bonnouvrier does not expect the trend to change anytime soon. “We feel like the door is closing, slowly but surely,” he said.
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