According to Vogue Australia’s first Fashion Week 2024 size inclusivity report, of the 1,209 looks presented by 38 separate designers for 2025 resort collections, only 1.1 per cent were plus-size (AU 18+).
Considering more than a third of Australian women are considered plus size, this is a disappointing but expected industry norm.
Fed up with lack of plus size inclusion in the industry and struggling with her own body image issues, local HR consultant and mum of two, Amy Abrahams, took to social media to advocate for change.
Since starting her Instagram account, Wear the Damn Dress, four years ago, Amy has amassed a following of 19.2K. She uses her platform to show people that you can exist in your body and that it deserves to be seen — no matter what size or shape you are.
In her pursuit to not let her body image issues dominate her life any longer, Amy has cultivated a loyal following of people who are finding the strength to challenge their own issues because of her content creation.
Amy’s passion for size inclusivity, body positivity and promoting size inclusive small brands recently saw her launch Revel The Runway —Canberra’s first ever plus size runway show. Her event in early March was not only a roaring success, it saw people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and backgrounds strut their stuff on the runway in an inclusive and professional setting.
Celebrating size diversity and challenging industry norms might not be Amy’s full time job, but her unrelenting and infectious devotion to creating change in this space will fool you otherwise.
Q: What is your overall goal with the work that you do in the plus size content creation space?
A: I think my overall goal is to not have plus size content creation. To just have content creation in the same way that you just have shopping and you just have clothes. There’s so many things that I would love it to do, but if I think about it simplistically, I just love when somebody says, “I never would have thought to try that or I wouldn’t have worn that, but then I saw it on you and I really liked it so I went and I got it.” And that’s really fulfilling and exciting to see people being able to change their attitudes and their thoughts.
Q: Why is plus has inclusion and body positivity important to you?
A: I mean, it’s important to me from my own experiences. I grew up in the 90s when diet culture was probably at one of its many fever pitches — the idea of heroin chic and those sorts of things. I can distinctly remember always being a thinner child until I hit early puberty, so probably around 9 or 10. I found that once I turned ten and I started changing, that there did become a lot of focus on my weight from my family which was actually quite different to my sister who started out like a kind of a chunkier little monkey and then got thinner the older she got.
I think when you think about the fact that there are more and more kids in particular who are becoming really conscious about their bodies and, even at Revel, the nine year old girl who walked down the runway, she has already had her own issues with body image and people at school telling her she’s fat.
I think it’s so important that we see a diversity of bodies and that we see lots of different bodies out there doing all sorts of things because we need to break that cycle and that perception that there’s only really one type of good body, because it’s mentally destroying for people, it’s physically destroying for people. And it’s because we don’t see the message that your body is okay the way it is.
Q: How has your perspective on the plus size fashion industry evolved since you launched Wear the Damn Dress?
A: I think there’s probably a couple of things. When I first started it was really just around finding clothes that fit me. So I was probably less focused on the idea of finding clothes that were properly inclusive and more just “great, I can fit into this so I’ll show it.” What I started to do though was follow a lot more plus size content creators and be a little bit more critical and conscious about what was actually out there in the market.
The concept that a 14 to 16 is the average size of an Australian woman — most stores stop at a 14 to 16. There is no standardised sizing in Australia, so if it’s a small make as a 16 to 18, depending on the brand, then that’s just one more store that I can’t shop at. And then thinking outside of myself and my own experiences, it was also like, “well, if I’m angry and upset because I can’t shop at stores, what if I was an 18 to 20, then it becomes harder. And then what if I was a 20 to a 22?’ So my thoughts on the plus sized fashion industry kind of started to creep out from what can I wear to what can everybody wear. Could I go shopping with a group of people of a diverse size range and we all have a good time? And the answer is no. Particularly for the higher end of plus size fashion. So your size 20 and upwards, it becomes almost impossible to go into a shopping center and find something to wear.
And then even online, the options become more challenging because there’s just not the variety to be able to express yourself the way you want to. A lot of mainstream brands don’t cater [to plus size women] and those who are trying to do the work with size inclusive clothing, they’re all online and they’re all struggling. Because for plus size people in particular, things don’t fit you the same way all the time so then you start to struggle with, “well I order it and it doesn’t fit me because I couldn’t try it on. And then I’ve got to pay to have it shipped to me because they’re a small business, so they can’t absorb the cost. And then I’ve got to pay to ship it back because they’re a small business and they can’t absorb the cost.”
So we just kind of go in this really weird cycle. And plus size fashion isn’t largely as fashionable as other styles and other brands, so you’re already kind of a little bit behind the eight ball. There’s people trying to do the work, but I think there’s still a long way to go.
Q: How has running Wear the Damn Dress impacted you personally?
A: It’s given me a lot more confidence, which sounds very twee, but the whole reason I started this was because I just felt like I was sick of waiting for my life to begin. I was really just sick of always being on a diet, always being in this cycle of self-loathing where I was trying to lose weight or I’d stop trying to lose weight and then I gained weight and then I was waiting until I had enough willpower to go back on a diet again so I could lose it. And it was just exhausting. Really exhausting.
So being able to start Wear the Damn Dress and force myself to take photos of myself every day, which is something I hadn’t wanted to do, and normalising what I look like and clearing out all the clothes that didn’t fit me anymore, it was like a reinvention of me. Of someone who was like, well, if I’m going to take a stand and tell people that this is okay, I need to be okay with it, too. It was really freeing.
Q: Why was doing Revel the Runway so important to you?
A: Doing Revel was so important to me because, again, especially in Canberra, Australia wide and internationally, but especially in Canberra, we don’t have a lot of plus size representation. If you look at social media events, you look at our fashion boutiques, all of those kind of things, we don’t have a lot of plus size fashion representation.
So I wanted to do two things. I wanted to show the kind of cottage industry that we have in Canberra with people who are emerging and doing really cool things in fashion, but I also wanted to put on a dedicated plus size runway to show that we have a place in the market. I wanted to show that you can be plus size and you can be fashionable, and there are a lot of brands who are trying to get there and who need help to reach an audience.
So by being able to showcase them to a Canberra audience here in the capital was something really cool, something exciting and something different. Not just for us, but for Australia as well.
Q: Yeah and for people to take it seriously!
A: Yes. Yes! That was one of the biggest things for me was I really didn’t want it to feel like a P&C fashion parade where a few mums have some chardys and stagger down the runway. I wanted it to feel professional. So we had a mix of signed and headhunted models. We did rehearsals, we did fittings. The venue was really important to me. Everything was really critical to pull together — as much as I could on my budget — a professional looking runway that people went, I felt like I got value out of that and that was really good.
Q: How do you feel about using social media, despite its promotion of negative beauty standards, as a platform to challenge those norms?
A: I think social media is a double-edged sword. I don’t deny that it can absolutely have some challenges, particularly with the rise of AI and filters and the ability for anybody to alter their appearance unrealistically. But, I also think if you’re careful with the way that you curate and use your social media, it is a platform to be able to see things that you don’t see in mainstream media.
Plus size fashion doesn’t really exist in mainstream media. Where I find most of my inspiration and most of my content and most of the brands that I shop with and all those sorts of things, is through Instagram. Because, I’ve trained my algorithm by not following a whole bunch of health stuff and things like that. I follow a lot of plus size fashion bloggers, fashion brands, those sorts of things, so I actually get an incredible sense of normality and reinforcement by seeing people who look like me regularly. Or not even that look like me, but seeing that diversity of bodies wearing clothing. And I don’t get that in mainstream media, I only get that through social media.
I think it’s definitely a balance and it’s about using it really consciously and knowing how to be critical of what you see. If you take it as inspiration not aspiration, then I think it works well.
Q: What feedback do you get from your community about the work that you do, and how does it make you feel?
A: I mean, there’s a lot of positive feedback, which is really nice. I’m very lucky that I don’t have a lot of trolls on my page, so I don’t get a lot of the really “ugh” comments. I mean, they still crop up every now and again, but I’m lucky that people are largely supportive, and are happy to share that feedback that says, ‘You doing this has changed my perspective on something.’ That’s an incredible feeling.
Doing this sometimes, you can actually have a huge impact on people and people you don’t know, people you’ve never met, but who just sit there and go, ‘I hear your voice in the dressing room sometimes – not in a weird way – when I’m trying something on and I’m being a bit critical. I hear your voice and I decide I’m going to buy it and wear it anyway. And then I really loved it.’ That’s so cool! You don’t get that anywhere else, I love it!
Q: If you could go back in time and talk to your teenage self, what would you tell her about where you are now?
A: I think I would tell her that there was never anything wrong with us. And we got to a place where we know that. And the constant cycle of the pursuit of a particular body type never made us happy. It never made us happy. And that one day, we’ll be able to focus on other things and it’ll be so much more rewarding than plugging calories into an app, or tracking macros, or researching menus before dinner or trying to look up whatever the latest crash dieting phase is and being miserable.
Q: Final question, what is next for you in this space?
A: Revel was a success and there is interest to do it again next year. I need to think about what that looks like. I was actually talking to somebody today about maybe [doing Revel in] New Zealand? But again, it comes back to what was the purpose of this runway? Was it just to show plus size fashion, or was it to show Canberra as well? And I need to have a little bit of a think about that. I’m trying to get out of Canberra a little bit more. To be able to showcase some of the things that we have and build a little bit more of a community down here. Canberra’s such a diverse city, it seems wild to me that we have such a niche fashion and content market. So trying to trying to kind of get us out there and do a little bit there too.
Q: Is there anything else you want to tell me or feel like I should know?
A: I think the only other thing I’d say is, I think a lot of people think that fashion is a very frivolous thing to hang your hat on as a cause. And my cause and my page and all those sorts of things is actually not really about fashion. It’s about the right to self-expression, and to be able to show up feeling as your best self, whatever your size.
Amy has come a long way from being sick of waiting to be thin for her life to start. Instead, she has taken the insecurities that once dominated her life and used them to dominate the plus size fashion content creation space. Her passion for fashion goes far beyond the glitz and glam – she is truly devoted to empowering people to use clothes as a tool to step into their power and take ownership of their lives.
Check out Amy on Instagram and follow more of her inspiring work on her blog where she shares styling tips and details about her incredible outfits.
Photos by Rebecca Zivkovic