
Kim Kardashian as she appears in the new issue of Love magazine.
Photo: Love Magazine/Steven Klein
Love her or loathe her, Kim Kardashian, and her distinctive
derriere, is to be admired for her recent mould-breaking work in the
fashion industry.
The fact that she appears naked
in the majority of her latest high-end fashion shoots should not be
lost on those who are caught up in the titillation of it all. Whether
deliberate or not, she's nude because, like the rest of us average-sized
women, she would struggle to fit into the size zero to four
sample-sized clothing design houses usually wheel out for photo shoots.
While the fashion-loving reality TV star,
who got her start working as a "wardrobe organiser" for Paris Hilton,
would never be considered "plus size" everything she would wear on set,
and sometimes even on the street, would require a lot of tailoring
around her petite, busty and hourglass frame.

Despite her curves, Kim Kardashian is the daring darling of the fashion scene.
Photo: Jason LaVeris
Her most recent turn going full frontal in front of the camera is for British high-fashion magazine,
Love,
in which she stars as the cover girl and in a fashion spread spanning
several pages. Out of the seven images she is wearing clothes in just
two of them. The rest involves swimsuits and her in her birthday suit
wearing the latest accessories by Prada.
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Sure these images, styled by renowned editor Katie Grand and shot by
the equally well-regarded Steven Klein, are artistic but could these
photos of Kardashian's fit-looking figure be trying to tell the fashion
designers of the world to relax and let the seams out a little?
Small
sample sizes make fiscal sense for an industry that is used to
tightening its belt but they are also to blame for creating the divide
between "models" and "plus-size models". Plus size, by definition, is
anything over an Australian size 12. The average Australian woman is
between a size 14 to 16.

Kim Kardashian's curves would struggle
to fit into the size zero to four sample-sized clothing that design
houses usually wheel out for photo shoots.
Photo: GQ
Much like Kardashian in her recent string of high-fashion shoots, successful models like former Victoria Secret star Heidi Klum and newly minted size 14
Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit rookie
Robyn Lawley made a name for themselves by not wearing clothes. Not by
choice, it was because the clothes didn't fit them.
"I was never a
catwalk model. I never really fit in the clothes. I was always too
curvy, I was always a lingerie model, even when I was still in Germany
when I won my modelling contest I would do lingerie and swimsuits
because I was always too curvy for high fashion," she told PS recently.
The
model, who returned to the Victoria's Secret catwalk just five weeks
after giving birth to her fourth child, doesn't hold a grudge but can't
see the industry embracing "real women".
"It's not really up to
me. It's up to the designers and most of the time they prefer really
thin girls not with a lot of curves, not with a lot of cleavage and
hips, so it's really up to them, they kind of rule the market in terms
of what kind of models make it," she said.
This issue of "real women" is also broached within the new issue of
Love via a photo essay titled "Boobs" featuring Kardashian's waif-like sister, Kendall Jenner.
The
close-to-six foot tall model appears topless alongside other size zero
models wearing large prosthetic breasts and backsides. The inspiration
for the photos was to show how breasts and butts of a certain size don't
fit into high-fashion. Literally.
"We're so accustomed to the
shape that's been on the runway for the past 20 years that I don't know
how honest this new, more curvaceous figure is as an intention. It seems
like a bit of a publicity stunt,"
Love's fashion director Panos Yiapanis said.
"When
Katie [Grand] told me that she was going to shoot Kim [Kardashian], I
thought this was the perfect chance to do this idea that I'd been
wanting to do. A lot of designers seem to be courting people like Kim,
but at the same time the clothes that they make still don't really fit
that body, unless they're custom-made. There's a slight insincerity to
that."
One designer who is perhaps playing close attention to the
realistic female form is Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing,
who has since cast Kardashian to star in the luxury brand's upcoming
spring/summer 2015 advertising campaign.
In 2004, before his
tenure, the French label was on the brink of financial collapse. Shortly
after his arrival in 2011 when he began rubbing shoulders and dressing
the Kardashians and Beyonces of the world, revenue doubled, thus
highlighting the fact that the only thing that should be "plus size" in
fashion, is a profit margin.
Source:http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/private-sydney/why-kim-kardashian-should-pose-nude-more-often-20150214-1392v7.html