UO Short Stories: Lauren
We meet up with four inspiring creatives in New York City to discuss career journeys, when they feel the most fulfilled and the evolution of their styles. Meet Eva, Imani, Simone and Lauren: these are their Short Stories.
"I am a size inclusion advocate. I am the founder of my own brand called Henning, and I'm a plus-size model. I'm originally from Toronto, Ontario in Canada, obviously. I'm in Brooklyn now, and I've been here for almost 10 years. It's been such a long journey. I started as a plus-size model, and what I really wanted to do was be a fashion editor. I was interning and writing as much as I could in the editing and writing world during the day, and moonlighting as a plus-size model accidentally. That's how I paid my rent and got my visa and all that very logistical stuff that I needed to check off to be in New York City."
"It was a happy accident that those ended up being the two worlds that I worked in because although at the time they were very separate, 10 years ago, plus-size fashion was not in the mainstream. We were not talking about body positivity and I felt like I had two separate lives. When I got my first editing gig, I decided somehow to bring those worlds together and I started writing about plus-size fashion. Right place, right time, very lucky happenstance for me, but that's kind of what made my career and gave me subject matter that I cared about so deeply. I think that's the reason behind a lot of the success I had as an editor, just because I was so passionate and I was the person that I was trying to reach. I understood and I related to the lack of inclusion and I had a fire to change that."
"The plus-size fashion industry has always been here. We've always had models. We've always had designers. We've always had our own publications. I think that what's happened in the past 10 years that is history-making, is that it has broken through the mainstream. And not only has it done that, it has become part of the fiber of mainstream fashion. It's very normal for a supermodel to be above a size two. It's normal for a major clothing brand to have an extended or plus-size range. It's so important. I can't believe it happened as fast as it did actually, and I can't wait to see what's next because we've come so far in not feeling othered."
"The best feedback that I get from my customers is... it literally makes me cry every time. One of the great ones was that someone told me that she changed... I'm actually going to cry! The coat that she bought changed the way that she saw herself and that everyone around her noticed, and that's just unbelievable. It's so moving. It's especially moving because I think as women who participate in fashion, we do get told a lot directly and indirectly that fashion is flippant and it doesn't matter, and it's shallow, or there's so much more we could be doing to help the world. And comments like that from people that I care so deeply about, who've had the same issues and exclusion that I have had, just give me a fire to rebuttal the statements from people who say that fashion is flippant. It is not. You don't know if that woman was a politician or a lawyer or a teacher who went and won a case or swung an election or helped a kid that day because they felt better about themselves."