I tell you the more I learn about her the more I love her here is some of what she said to New York Magazine
Historically you haven’t featured many plus-size models in the magazine. Why are you doing this now?
I’m doing it now because I did this petition against the pro-anorexia websites, and this petition in a way is going up every day, because now 9,000 signed the petition, and most of them, the people anyway in the comments, they say, “Yes, you are doing this petition, but you only use skinny girls on the runway, in the magazines, so what do you want to teach us?” So I said, I will show you, I will use beautiful women — curvy. And so we did it because they all say Italian Vogue would never do it.
But why haven’t you — and the rest of the fashion industry, for that matter — featured women who were plus-size with any regularity at all over the past couple of decades?
It was skinny, skinny, skinny, and more skinny for so long. Even though plus-size girls are much more visible now than they had been, skinny models unquestionably dominate the casting circuit.
Because I think it’s a mentality. Let’s say, for example in the eighties, beauty was very sporty, very healthy, and we arrived at the supermodels: They had hips and butts, and they were really women, and that started this long wave of teenagers whose bodies are still not shaped, most of them. And immediately they thought the skinnier you are, the more beautiful. All in fashion are victims — the media, even myself, even the runways — of the beauty of the moment.
The new issue makes me think of the all-black issue you did a couple of years ago, which created a lot of talk about the lack of racial diversity in fashion.
With the black girls now it was two years ago that this happened, and I see on the runway more and more black girls and more and more beautiful black girls. This kind of provocation makes a change; it could not affect everybody, that’s for sure. But I don’t want it to change the world. I only would like that instead of skinny girls, that they should have real women — like the moment of the supermodels. Cindy Crawford was an amazing woman, Naomi is so beautiful — so why should we not just see younger girls but adults? [Teenagers] look so unreal in a way sometimes, you know?
Have you shot anymore plus-size models since shooting the June issue?
Not yet, but we will.
Do you think plus-size models will ever get the same work and at the same rate as straight-size models?
No, I don’t think so, because for the moment — and we never know, you know? — but for the moment I don’t think we’ll see the same proportion [of plus-size models as straight-size models]. Just like we don’t see the same proportion of white and black girls. They use curvy models sometimes, like a provocation, but it is just to show something different, which I don’t like honestly. I loved for example Prada, the winter before last she used three or four girls which were curvy girls. So not everybody will embrace that, I don’t think so. But I think in a way we will stop to think, do you really want to go on with all these skinny girls? If this is the only question that comes up, for me [the issue] will be a big success.