Designers seemed to swear off straight-and-narrow silhouettes on the fall 2025 runways. Alaïa kicked off Paris Fashion Week with tubular hooded dresses and undulating skirts inspired by sculptor Mark Manders. Both Sarah Burton's Givenchy debut exploring "everything about the modern woman" and Anthony Vaccarello's stripped-back Saint Laurent show embraced tailoring with exaggerated shoulders—to contrast a steeply inverted parabola of a waist. And at Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada made a declaration to accompany her bullet bras and curved-shoulder suits: "The identification of the feminine is synonymous with the curve."
While that ethos wrapped models in sinuous dresses and amped-up power suiting, it didn't bring curves to the casting itself. Runways all season long were devoid of mid- or plus-size models—so much so that it became a daily complaint in my fashion editor group chat. Vogue Business confirmed what we all saw. A semi-annual size-inclusivity study released on March 17 reported that only 0.3 percent of the total looks shown across the major markets (New York, London, Milan, and Paris) were plus-size. That's an even steeper decline from last season when 0.8 percent of looks appeared on plus-size models.
