De­siree See­baran

"Thick sauce, Mampie, chub­by, fluffy, plump, puffy, huge, whale, fat..." There are a lot of names for plus-size women; some of them hurt­ful. Be­ing fat is of­ten seen as a neg­a­tive, and not just be­cause of its pos­si­ble neg­a­tive health in­di­ca­tors. It's a rea­son for chil­dren to be bul­lied at school and the ba­sis for dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices on planes and oth­er pub­lic places. From the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try to the cor­po­rate board­room to the fash­ion run­way, thin is in.

"But a Caribbean woman is a plus-size woman," said Shean­na Al­leyne, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Carivog In­ter­na­tion­al and CEO of Caribbean Fash­ion Plus Week. Her ex­pe­ri­ence in fash­ion and beau­ty pageantry is ex­ten­sive-she runs the Ms T&T UK pageant, Pos­i­tive Run­way (Caribbean fran­chise), and she's al­so trained some of our in­ter­na­tion­al pageant rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in­clud­ing Hei­di Ros­tant and Alex­ia Charlerie. "Even if we are be­tween size 0 to 8, we might have a fuller bust or a big­ger butt."

And if you pinch your arm and get more than an inch of skin, you'd be con­sid­ered plus-size by some in the in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion in­dus­try. Yet when we look at in­ter­na­tion­al beau­ty pageants, our stan­dards of beau­ty still ad­here to rules that few Caribbean women can at­tain or main­tain.

But this at­ti­tude may be chang­ing. Al­leyne and her team of or­gan­is­ers, mod­els and sup­port­ers are part of a move­ment that is re­fus­ing to ac­cept that beau­ty equals thin. Now in its sec­ond year, the new­ly re­brand­ed Caribbean Fash­ion Plus Week (CF­PW) ex­tends from No­vem­ber 1 to 4, and in­cludes a huge launch, two ma­jor fash­ion shows, work­shops and oth­er plus-size fash­ion ac­tiv­i­ties. Their slo­gan: one size does not fit all.

Big is good busi­ness

Al­leyne ar­gues that peo­ple of­ten look at plus-size fash­ion as a cause for pity and do­na­tions, not as a vi­able busi­ness. And most of the plus-size fash­ions sold in T&T are im­port­ed from de­sign­ers who are mak­ing mil­lions off of the full fig­ured niche mar­ket; from 2010 to 2011, plus sizes made up over US$17 bil­lion in sales in the USA alone.

Still, Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad & To­ba­go fash­ion grad­u­ates are on­ly taught how to draw pat­terns for sizes 0 to 12, and many de­sign­ers are not fa­mil­iar with the kinds of fab­rics and cut­ting tech­niques that flat­ter fuller fig­ures, Al­leyne said.

Why aren't lo­cal de­sign­ers sell­ing more clothes that fit more women?

"If some­one has a health prob­lem, they should do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to en­sure that they live longer and have a good qual­i­ty life," Al­leyne said. "But at the same time they are en­ti­tled to dress them­selves prop­er­ly. Slim peo­ple may al­so be un­healthy be­cause of some­thing in their lifestyle, but they have ac­cess to a wider va­ri­ety of cloth­ing.

"We need to re-ed­u­cate our­selves. I am not down­play­ing the present in­dus­try, they are do­ing a fab­u­lous job. And they should not be forced to come out of their com­fort zones if it doesn't make sense for them. But we do need new de­sign­ers to come out and dis­cov­er this in­dus­try."

The CF­PW mod­el crew has been busy over the last months. From a Pe­ter Paul Rubens-themed pho­to shoot to a shoot in Cli­co Sforza­ta's pan yard to pub­lic 'pop up' pho­to shoots in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do and Ari­ma, the 34 sassy, full fig­ured lo­cal mod­els have helped to spread the word about a dif­fer­ent type of fash­ion show: one that's open to all com­ers.

Tshenelle Bethel, one of the CF­PW mod­els said, "We are show­cas­ing the fact that beau­ty comes in all sizes and even more so, in­spir­ing women to love them­selves. The pub­lic shoot done at Li­brary Cor­ner, San Fer­nan­do was met with such warmth and ac­cep­tance. That in it­self shows me that as plus size mod­els we are mak­ing steps in the right di­rec­tion."

And they're not the on­ly ones. Eleven in­ter­na­tion­al plus size mod­els, in­clud­ing New York's Ka­t­ri­na Hayes, Jes­si­ca Marie Rivera from Puer­to Ri­co and South Ko­re­an mod­el Vi­vian Kim are al­so slat­ed to strut their stuff at the Pan In Style and Run­way Caribbean fash­ion shows for CF­PW. CF­PW has al­so found staunch sup­port from lo­cal spon­sors like Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, where many of the events are be­ing held, or part­ners like pho­tog­ra­phers An­dros Bel­fonte, Antony Scul­ly, San­cho Fran­cis­co, fash­ion blog­ger Lean­na Ca­ma­cho and fash­ion de­sign­er Wayne Sankar. The plus size army is grow­ing in num­bers.

Chang­ing minds

Al­leyne said that chang­ing the pub­lic mind­set from stig­ma­ti­sa­tion to cel­e­bra­tion of plus size fash­ion must start at a place that you wouldn't ex­pect: with plus sized peo­ple them­selves. She helped es­tab­lish pageants like Miss Big and Beau­ti­ful T&T to help lift the self es­teem of women of size.

"And we found that one of the great­est ar­eas that we can de­vel­op self es­teem is in the area of cloth­ing. When you wear some­thing beau­ti­ful, you feel bet­ter," she added. "For years women of size were made to feel in­fe­ri­or when they walk in­to bou­tiques. By hav­ing a fash­ion week that show­cas­es cloth­ing for peo­ple of all sizes, we're chang­ing that. Even in our se­lec­tion of mod­els we try to have a very re­al­is­tic pic­ture of what the Caribbean woman, the Caribbean body rep­re­sents."

CF­PW has a much wider agen­da than just en­cour­ag­ing the de­sign and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of big­ger clothes. Plus size fash­ion needs to be tak­en more se­ri­ous­ly and to be made more ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic that's clam­our­ing for it, said CF­PW mar­ket­ing strate­gist Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray.

"We're not a punch line in a Learie Joseph show any­more," Charles-Far­ray said blunt­ly. "Sta­tis­tics from the Min­istry of Health dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 2012 show that Trinidad and To­ba­go's pop­u­la­tion is now 58 per cent plus size. This has se­ri­ous busi­ness im­pli­ca­tions for the fash­ion in­dus­try in both the medi­um and long term. It's time to start get­ting se­ri­ous about in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment for the plus size fash­ion in­dus­try.

"The most im­por­tant as­pect for us is in­clu­sion in­to trade," Al­leyne added. "It is def­i­nite­ly an in­dus­try that needs to be de­vel­oped." CF­PW is talk­ing pos­si­ble long-term col­lab­o­ra­tions with chair­man An­tho­ny Ra­hael of T&T Fash­ion Week, San­dra Carr of the UTT Caribbean

Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign, lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al de­sign­ers and re­tail stores. The 11 in­ter­na­tion­al plus size mod­els they've in­vit­ed are part of their net­work­ing ef­forts with the glob­al plus size fash­ion in­dus­try. It's a com­mu­ni­ty build­ing ef­fort, and it all re­volves around mak­ing every­one feel like they can be hap­py, no mat­ter what size they wear.

Charles-Far­ray puts it best: "CF­PW is say­ing don't wait. You don't have to be a cer­tain size to dress the way you de­sire and to live your own fash­ion­able life."

For more in­for­ma­tion, check out the Caribbean Fash­ion Plus Week Face­book page.