The rise of the 'inbetweenie' model

Are adverts such as Calvin Klein’s latest campaign using a ‘plus-size model’ – in this case a UK 14 – a closer reflection of the reality that women in the UK are size 16 on average or merely paying lip service?

Myla Dalbesio in Calvin Klein’s Perfectly Fit campaign. Photograph: Lachlan Bailey for Calvin Klein

The debate about fashion and body image is rarely silent, but this week it roared – with a new focus on a Calvin Klein campaign featuring Myla Dalbesio, a model who is approximately a UK size 14. In the fashion industry, this qualifies as plus-size – most models are a UK size six to eight – a fact that provoked much outrage on social media when the campaign was released.
Dalbesio is at the slimmer end of the plus-size spectrum, in which the standard model size is a UK size 16 – the same as the average British woman. Speaking to the Today show in America, Dalbesio described herself instead as an “inbetweenie”. “We’re not skinny enough to be straight-size, like these [US] size zero and size two girls, and we’re not big enough to be plus-size.”
It is this new categorisation, the inbetweenie, that is on the rise in fashion imagery. Calvin Klein’s campaign features Dalbesio modelling not for a plus-size-specific range, but as part of a lineup in their Perfectly Fit underwear, an equal with Jourdan Dunn (a size 6) and Lara Stone (an 8). It recognises the reality that the brand’s underwear will be worn by a variety of women, of all sizes.
Calvin Klein is not the only brand to embrace the inbetweenie, as a way to answer the public’s increasingly loud calls to see more “normal” women in advertising. In 2012, Ralph Lauren worked with Robyn Lawley, a UK size 12, dubbed the “queen of the inbetweenies” by the blog Style Has No Size and H&M used Jennie Runk, also a 12, in a campaign for plus-size swimwear the same year. This week, American Vogue joined in, too, running a lingerie fashion shoot using an array of body types, headlining it “The Best Lingerie comes in all sizes”.

Jennie Runk in the H&M campaign. Photograph: PR

In the age of social media, public campaigns about size in fashion are ever more prevalent – and more raucous and powerful. Last month, there was a furore over Topshop’s use of mannequins with extremely long, slim legs. This week, Gap and Old Navy were the target of a petition aiming to level the prices of women’s jeans in stores – at the moment, a size 6 costs $26 (£16) and a size 26 $40 (£26) at Old Navy – which has close to 40,000 signatures.
There is commercial gain for brands that engage. Evidence that women are more likely to buy clothes worn by models closer to their age, size and race came in a Cambridge University study in 2012 and, with the size 16 average, the plus-size market is growing. Sales of size 14-plus clothes reached $16bn (£10bn) in the US in 2013. “There is a fear and anxiety around straying from the tried and tested route to profit,” says Caryn Franklin, who with Debra Bourne set up All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, an organisation to promote diversity in fashion. “But I think designers are becoming more body-image literate. This latest word is a marketing term but it challenges the standard fashion body as default.”

Robyn Lawley, the ‘queen of the inbetweenies’, in a Ralph Lauren campaign. Photograph: Ralph Lauren

There is still a question as to whether the inbetweenie may denote actual change in terms of diversity in fashion, or if it is the latest example of the industry courting attention by flirting with the aesthetic of non-standard sized models. London Fashion Week designer Mark Fast put plus-sized models including Crystal Renn on his catwalk in 2009, prompting much debate, and Jean Paul Gaultier did the same the following year. Vogue Paris created a plus-sized edition in 2010, edited by Penelope Cruz. Naomi Shimada, plus-size model and healthy body image blogger is quick to dismiss most magazines’ efforts as lip service but concedes that the Calvin Klein campaign – something specifically designed to shift units, unlike a fashion shoot in a magazine – is moving in the right direction. “Any step towards variety can only be a good thing,” she says. Shimada herself recently appeared in a campaign for the high-street store Monki, on equal billing as a non-plus sized model.
Sarah Watkinson, the director of plus-size modelling agency 12+ UK, has seen the inbetweenie’s popularity rise recently. “It used to be that clients wanted girls who are at least a size 16, but now that doesn’t matter so much,” she says. “It’s more about a healthy image to aspire to – an inbetweenie is that size.”