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However, i have to admit that fashion industry does discriminate such women and clothing for them often looks ugly and derivative rather than interesting and original. And i do consider that starting a magazine focused on fuller figures might be justified. But this magazine should also be focused on making women aware that being fat is not really good. ANd i doubt that 'Slink' magazine will do that as people don't like to be reminded of things they do wrong.
This is what DailyMail writes about it: 'Slink' is published bi-monthly and costs £3.85. It is 100 pages of fashion and beauty devoted to the fuller-figured woman. The editor is 26-year-old Rivkie Baum. As a teenager, she was a size 22, mainly because ‘I didn’t stop eating’, but this didn’t stop her falling in love with fashion.
‘I loved the Evans teenage range, which I wish they would bring back, but mostly it was so hard, so frustrating,’ she says. ‘I would scour Camden Market looking for clothes that were big enough.’
Did she read glossy magazines? ‘I read all of them. I loved the images and really wanted to fit in. But there was nothing for young women who are bigger. The only answer was for me to get smaller.’
Today, Rivkie is a size 18 and happy that way. When younger and never able to find anything to wear, she decided to train to be a fashion designer. She studied pattern-cutting and design at the London College of Fashion. But, again, she was excluded.
‘We would cut patterns using a standard block, which was a small size ten. In four years of study, do you want to know how long we spent learning to make a pattern to make a garment that would fit a woman above a size ten? One afternoon.’
Her dream is still to design her own label, but in the meantime, she is putting all her efforts into the magazine. She has just given up her job in sales to work full-time on the publication, which she launched online a year ago before deciding to take the plunge into print.
She says Slink is aspirational, not warts and all — referring to the Glamour photograph of Lizzie Miller, which she feels was exploitative, sensational and designed to get publicity.
‘I think the Lizzie Miller shoot was crass, as was the shoot in Heat featuring a naked and curvaceous Gemma Collins, The Only Way Is Essex star. We are not voyeuristic.’
Rivkie has banned ‘straight’ models (the industry term for girls size 10 and below) from her magazine. This poses a problem, given this means she can’t fill her pages with snapshots from the catwalk. To get round this, she has commissioned a fashion illustrator to ‘supersize’ the catwalk looks, showing exactly how they would appear on a fuller figure.
Alongside these drawings are all the pieces that can be bought in sizes up to a 30 that will replicate the designer look. ‘So the reader feels she is getting the look from the catwalk . . . and is not made to feel she can’t even try to look like that,’ she says.
