A group of Yukon women are hoping to be featured by an American clothing retailer that is using women from academia in its ads, instead of rail-thin agency models.

San Francisco-based clothing company Betabrand is using PhD holders and doctoral students on its web page this season billing them as real-women.

When Tanis Davey at Yukon College caught wind of the campaign she sent the company a tweet.

"Saying they've missed out on some really smart stylish women at the Yukon Research Centre and they responded by sending us clothing," Davey says.

Five local women with PhDs in areas such as mathematics and weather science were picked to model the clothes.

One of them, Bronwyn Benkert, says she's happy to see the fashion industry looking at more than the body when models are chosen,

"The movement in fashion is less towards, like, the shape of the model, the body of the model, and more about the real person that's wearing the clothes. And so I value that in a company," Benkert says.

The images from the Yukon photo shoot are being sent to Betabrand and people at the College hope to see them on the company's web site soon.