Tess Holliday

Tess Holliday is a Los Angeles-based fashion model; strikingly pretty in the usual way, glossy red-gold hair, and a body – not so usual – that brings tears to women's eyes, gets them leaping to their feet and cheering like schoolgirls at her catwalk shows.

Why? At 1.65cm, and size 22, Holliday, 29, is unapologetically body positive in a business bristling with size 0 models.

"You'll see women applauding and cheering, standing up and hugging each other," says Erin Cox, co-organiser of the Curvy Couture runway show in which Holliday walked as headline model.

Cox says so called 'plus-size' models remind the 50 per cent of Australian women, size 14 and over that "normal is OK" and Holliday's even bigger brand of beauty is a particularly radical fashion breakthrough. "Tess is a sign of the times," she says.


Curvy Couture is part of the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival's cultural programme, 80-odd disparate events that festival CEO Graeme Lewsey describes as key in a deliberate plan to address fashion's (often woeful) track record of addressing community diversity.

"It's about democratising traditional fashion weeks," he says, "Offering a world-class level of creativity that's respected and revered and – this is the big thing – enabling everyone who is a fashion consumer, to enjoy and explore fashion in all its forms."

VAMFF's cultural programme sprawls two weeks either side of its core week, (March 14 – 21) and, apart from a broad base of art and film events, engages most of the so-called minorities traditionally excluded from high fashion catwalks and glossy imagery.

"We've got 39 nationalities represented on our main runways, but we've also got lots of independent organisers, lots of examples of minority groups in the cultural programme who have their own, interesting spin on the fashion conversation," says Lewsey.

"Curvy Couture is here for a second year, we've got our seniors and indigenous-fashion runways, there's kids, and menswear of course, even petites are in the Target runway ... We've even got Andreja [Pejic]!"

Most so-called "minorities" are covered, but for Shirley Mason, co-organiser of next week's Don't Stop Me Now show in which elderly amateurs (including one in a wheelchair) from Melbourne's University of the Third Age will model.

"A lot of our members are quite ... financially sound," she says delicately, "But, I don't think designers always appreciate this huge market of retired people who want to spend money on themselves."

In fact, a smattering of older models has featured in recent high fashion campaigns, glossy magazines and catwalks, a direct result of the New York-based global media phenomenon, Advanced Style.

Fashion's exclusive formula is still entrenched, according to Matthew Anderson of Chadwick Models, at least for now. "The reasons why are more complex than you can imagine, but it's basically, supply and demand," he says.

Don't Stop Me Now, Sunday, March 15 www.u3amelbcity.org.au