Why Lena Dunham is championing high fashion for plus-size women
In the ten or so years since she commencement became famous, Lena Dunham has been many things. She has been a wunderkind, a writer-manager-role player-producer of both feature films and telly series, voice of her generation, David Remnick mentee, Gold Globe winner and representative of liberal white privilege.
She has been a Vogue cover daughter, newsletter maven and subject area of social media shaming. As well head of her own book imprint at Random House, endometriosis and hysterectomy survivor, and oversharer.
She has been so many things, in fact (seriously, has information technology been just ten years?), that it is kind of boggling to realise that one thing she hasn't been is that increasingly beloved side hustle of almost anyone in the public middle: A fashion designer.
Of class, that may be because another thing she has been is an oft unfairly mocked presence on the red carpet, subject of condescending memes and style police cruelty.
"I am not," she said recently, "a celebrity who's ever been asked to represent a product. I am not a person for many reasons who anyone fifty-fifty wants to represent a product." She does, however, love apparel.
And in the process of wearing a lot of clothes, and getting a lot of clothes "slightly wrong", and being attacked for the clothes she wore, she discovered a hole in the market. So existence Lena Dunham, she decided she was the one to fix information technology.
Recently, the eleven Honore x Lena Dunham debuted, a collaboration between Dunham and the e-tail site that has championed high style for plus-size women, getting rails designers to make their brands accessible beyond size 10.
It volition be 11 Honore's first celebrity foray, and it is a tightly edited collection of simply five items, because, Dunham said, "I've totally given upward on the idea of being any type of impresario or person who had something to say to everyone". She was speaking over a Zoom call from London, where she has been holed up shooting a film.
"Right now the but thing I'thou doing is speaking almost my own feel," she said. "Then this clothing line is a directly response to my experience."
READ: Ladies, hither'due south where to store for plus-size clothes that suit Asian bodies
Introducing Lena, version eight.0 (or xv.0?): Humble-but-enthusiastic body-neutral advocate and new celebrity designer, at peace with herself and nearly to emerge into the world once more.
Non just because she has another pic on the way (besides the pic she is working on in London), called Sharp Stick and written during pandemic summertime as "a meditation on the complexity of, uh, female sexual desire and how it intersects with trauma".
But as well because she is non only the designer of the habiliment line, along with Danielle Williams Eke of 11 Honore, but its face and model. Yup, she'south putting herself out there again.
She knows what that may entail.
BODY POSITIVITY… SORT OF
Later on years of having a complicated and very public relationship with her torso, of yo-yoing in weight because of medical and personal issues, Dunham, 34, has come to terms with it.
Last March, she got the coronavirus. Everyone knows this, because she later posted "My COVID story" on Instagram, where she has 2.viii million followers. Though she has recovered, the disease affected her pituitary gland and left her with partial adrenal insufficiency, she said, so she is taking steroids.
"Not the cool kind that make you muscular," she said. "Simply the kind that make your face fat. I'm trying to roll with that. Trying to be chin positive. I can deal with anything, but a triple mentum is a hard place to land."
All the same, she is careful to give thanks her medical team and talk nearly how she knows she is privileged to have access to private health care and to be able to do a job.
"It doesn't mean I haven't felt a lot of body hatred in lockdown," she said. She is non a fan of some electric current terminology, of words similar "plus" or "bend" or "trunk positive".
"The thing that's complicated almost the torso positive move," she said, "is it tin can be for the privileged few who have a body that looks the way people desire to feel positive. We want curvy bodies that expect similar Kim Kardashian has been upsized slightly. We want big beautiful butts and big beautiful breasts and no cellulite and faces that await similar you could smack them on to thin women."
"I have a big stomach, I always have. That's where I proceeds my weight – especially after early menopause, I accept a straight-up gut, similar an onetime man – and that'south not where anybody wants to see flesh. It's non like if I posted a sensual nude of myself on Instagram, people would be marvelling at my beautiful derriere."
As she said this, she did not sound angry or depressed or like she was sticking it to the man. She sounded sort of resigned and amused at herself. She was sitting in a very white room with a fireplace, wearing a cablevision-knit cardigan and lots of rings on her fingers. Her hair was long, and her bangs were short. In the heart of the conversation, she suddenly began chomping on a sandwich, which made her laugh.
"It seems advisable for this interview that I eat this large baguette," she said.
'WE'RE GOING TO PUT A WATERMELON ON YOUR SKIRT'
Dunham had been contemplating getting into fashion long before the pandemic began. She had originally thought she would make a total-fledged collection from size 0 to 20, because… well, she doesn't really do one-half measures.
Likewise, she'southward smart enough, and does enough research, to know that in that location is a proud history of female person designers getting into the business organization because they know what is missing, whether it's Coco Chanel or Donna Karan or fifty-fifty the Olsens. But, she said, "there was and then much I didn't know about the infrastructure".
In 2019, she met Patrick Herning, the owner and founder of xi Honore, where she happened to be a frequent shopper. The two bonded over proselytising for plus-size figures and began hatching a programme. Because Herning had recently introduced a private characterization line, he had the supply chain and design staff in place for Dunham. All she had to bring were the ideas.
"I said, 'You're an player, you're a storyteller, let's do this, then nosotros can do a sequel – Season ii," he said.
Here's where she started: "What I really love in manner is a sure level of playfulness and winky intelligence that people just don't think bigger women want or understand. No i thinks plus women take a sense of humor, and if they do, it's, 'Nosotros're going to put a watermelon on your skirt, you sassy daughter!' None of information technology has subtlety or true sophistication."
She continued: "There'southward and so much judgment around bigger bodies, and I think 1 of the judgments is that bigger women are stupider. They swallow too much and don't know how to stop. Thin women must be discerning and able to use their willpower. Bigger women must exist limited in their understanding of the globe, and they keep doing things that are bad for them. The amount of people who take written to me on my page: 'Y'all're promoting obesity. Don't you understand you're killing yourself. Are you lot stupid? Why are yous doing that?'"
For her, way is grapheme. She has a new boyfriend, whom she met in London – "Information technology's been a few months," she said. "I experience really lucky." He is a musician, she added, raised in England and Republic of peru, and "the greatest person I've ever met" – and when she borrows his hat and leather jacket, she said, "I want to homo-spread!" She considers the designers she loves, including Rachel Comey and Giambattista Valli and Christopher Kane, to be artists, so when she wears their clothes on the ruddy carpet she is celebrating their fine art.
"That's why I never sympathise why anyone would want to exit on the cerise rug in a nude column dress," she said.
WHAT DESIGNERS DON'T UNDERSTAND
The apparel Dunham has helped brand for 11 Honore are not exactly nutty – they definitely are not going to change the earth – just they accept a fiddling lift. She describes them as apparel for a day walking effectually SoHo doing all sorts of things.
They were inspired, she said, by the women she remembers from the 1990s, like Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith, who would barge around in men'southward shirts and Yohji Yamamoto skirts and unbrushed hair because their very active minds were on other things. That's a description that may overexcite those who associate her with elitism, but also one that is not entirely inaccurate.
Dunham's female parent, the artist and lensman Laurie Simmons, named each look after one of the family's old haunts in SoHo, similar the original Dean & DeLuca store on Broadway (now closed), which is the name of a navy pinstriped suit with scalloped hems on the jacket (Dean) and brim (DeLuca).
Dunham's father, Carroll Dunham, who is a painter, made the impress for a geometric floral clothes with an disproportionate hem that is chosen Madderlake, after a florist that besides used to be on Broadway. The sheathing collection costs between U.s.a.$98 (S$131) for a ribbed mock-turtleneck cotton jersey tank and US$298 (S$399) for the jacket; sizes run from 12 to 26. (She herself has "settled into a size 14 to 16".)
Dunham said she spent a lot of time on the fit because one of the things near designers don't understand is that making clothes for bigger bodies doesn't hateful just adding more than material or cutting the waist wider. You need to use darts differently to cover tummy curves and bottom curves and upper arms that swell in the heat.
She really wanted to include a miniskirt because whenever she tried to detect one, it would hitch up in the back and, she said, "I tin't wear it because I'm basically showing what my mother would refer to equally my pupick".
She refuses to article of clothing Spanx – near of the time, she said, she barely wears a bra — and none of the clothes she made require it. The one time she did wear a corset to an consequence, Glenn Close cut it off her in a bathroom.
"She had a trivial butterfly scissor like a friggin' angel," Dunham said. (Information technology was unclear why Close would have brought sewing pair of scissors to a gala, but – be prepared!)
"She too gave me the best advice. I was crying in my heels, and she said, 'Y'all go platform boots from a rave store, and yous clothing those.' And I did, and I take. And then, thanks, Glenn Shut."
Past Vanessa Friedman © 2022 The New York Times
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/style/lena-dunham-11-honore-plus-size-fashion-women-179591
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