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 1.65m, and size 22, Holliday, 29, is unusually short and unapologetically fat in a business bristling with lissom, genetically blessed teenagers.

Tess Holliday is unusually short and unapologetically fat in a business bristling with lissom, genetically blessed teenagers.

"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 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.