Every fashion week leaves behind a pattern. This season’s? Painfully, almost impressively obvious: body inclusivity packed its bags and left the building. Show after show, the same sample-size silhouette on repeat, almost identical, with almost no variation in body types. After years of very loud conversations about representation, the runways suddenly looked like they had slipped back into an older playbook. For an industry that never misses a chance to call itself woke and inclusive, the casting was not just disappointing — it was a whole statement.
It’s impossible to ignore the timing. We are deep in the era of ‘looksmaxxing,’ where every feature is being optimised, sculpted, reduced, and sharpened into submission. Meanwhile, Ozempic has graduated from medical conversations into celebrity headlines, group chats and dinner table debates about other people’s bodies. Fashion absorbs cultural signals faster than most industries, and right now the signal seems clear: thinness is trending again. The recent fashion weeks reflected that mood almost immediately — enthusiastically, even.
And when thinness becomes the visual standard, inclusivity is the first thing quietly shown the door.
This isn’t a new issue for fashion. The industry has been called out on this for years, and he response follows a script so familiar you could recite it in your sleep. A few curve models walk a handful of shows. Headlines celebrate progress. Panels and discussions follow. Then, a season or two later, the momentum evaporates and inclusivity shrinks back into being a moment rather than a movement — visible on one runway walk, invisible everywhere else.
Watching the recent shows, that cycle played out in real time. Across cities, the casting felt extremely uniform. You could watch multiple shows back to back and struggle to spot even one visibly plus-size model. And when a different body type did appear, it stood out immediately, which says everything about how rare those moments still are.
What makes it worse — and more than a little absurd — is the contradiction happening on the runway itself. Designers are experimenting with volume, sculpted shapes, padded silhouettes, and clothing that exaggerates curves or builds them artificially. And yet, the majority of these looks are being shown on bodies that are the precise opposite of what the clothes suggest. Fashion is quite literally playing with the idea of curves while keeping real curvy bodies largely off the stage. The irony isn’t subtle.
Back home, the situation isn’t drastically different. At Lakmé Fashion Week this season, only a couple of shows included visibly plus-size models. That’s a small number, especially in a country like India, where the average body type of women is naturally curvier. Indian fashion has a huge, diverse audience, yet the runways often present a much narrower version of who that audience is.
This is where the conversation gets genuinely uncomfortable. Because the industry is not oblivious. Designers know it. Casting directors know. Brands know. Yet the shift still feels partial and temporary. One plus-size model in a forty-look lineup doesn’t change the narrative — it just provides cover for it. A single appearance on a runway doesn’t automatically translate into campaign faces, ambassador deals, or sustained visibility across seasons. Representation has to be consistent to actually mean something.
The bigger issue is that fashion still treats inclusivity like a gesture rather than infrastructure. Sample sizes remain extremely limited. Runway pieces are still often produced in a single size that fits a very specific body type, which then determines who can be cast. If the clothes aren’t made with different bodies in mind from the beginning, inclusivity becomes difficult to execute later.
But beyond logistics, there’s a cultural shift happening that the industry seems to be responding to faster than its own promises. Right now, beauty standards are tightening again. Social media trends reward a specific kind of transformation, the kind that leans toward slimmer, sharper, and smaller. In that environment, the runway becomes a reflection of what the industry believes will resonate visually.
The problem is that fashion also shapes what people aspire to. The runway still carries enormous influence. When it narrows the definition of beauty, that message travels everywhere: editorials, campaigns, retail imagery, and even how people talk about their own bodies.
For India, the gap feels even more noticeable. Walk through any city, attend any event, look around at the women actually buying and wearing fashion here — the diversity in body types is obvious. Curves are normal. Different shapes are normal. Yet when fashion week arrives, the runway often shows a much smaller slice of reality.
That disconnect is why this conversation refuses to go away. Because the audience hasn’t forgotten the issue. If anything, people are more attuned to it now than they’ve ever been.
Fashion loves to position itself as the industry of the future. But if the recent fashion weeks revealed anything, it’s that fashion is still negotiating something very basic: whose bodies get to be part of the story in the first place.
Also Read,
Tom Ford Brings Executive Realness to Paris Fashion Week
