Today I was sent a video by Lebanese actress, model and singer Cyrine Abdel Nour featuring our one and only Puerto Rican model gone international Frederick Valentin. He is locally represented by the agency Krone Models on the island and continues to make us proud with his upcoming projects and his foreign success! Check out the video here:
Every couple of years beauty standards evolve and create a niche for women to fall into. We construct these different ideals of what the paradigm of diverse allures. This effect trickles down from the runways to magazines, television and into our homes.
Photo by Saul Miranda for Be Plus Magazine.
While the fashion world still has a ways to go when it comes to promoting diversity on the runways and in the pages of our favorite magazines, more and more designers and brands have been embracing the industry’s growing body-acceptance movement and hiring models that don’t adhere to the under-size-four norm lately. And the 10 plus-size stunners spotlighted below are leading the charge—starring in controversial campaigns, fronting fashion glossies and snapping up other jobs once reserved for women with one specific body type. Breaking the mold is local modeling agency Krone with model Anaïs Conde and her unique look.
For years the fashion industry has portrayed the “perfect” image of a person: tall, thin, dark and flawless. But recently the modeling world has taken a more abstract path and Designers have been changing their view at a rapid pace, with more unusual faces.
The industry is known for being on the constant move. From the artistic and the avant guarde, to the mundane and urban. The recognition of being ground breaking and pushing barriers of the aesthetics is much owed to the vision of these Designers, Editors and Stylist. Recently we’ve seen them step out of the stereo typical aspects of beauty by using a wide variety of models on the runways with traits that in the past would have been shun.
Models outside the standards of beauty are those who have been gracing the catwalks and editorials, plus-size, skin conditions like vitiligo or albinism, transgendered and down syndrome have recently been seen on the runway and blowing everyone away. Locally there has been a slow evolution into the tendencies that we’ve been seeing in American and European Runways. But the regional market is extremely limited to diversity and usually moves at a slower pace, but never cease to catch up with professionals that take chances.
Top agencies around the world like: Red Model Management, New York; Angels & Demons, Paris; Izaio Models, Berlin, Nathalie Models, Paris; AMCK Models, London; Jill Models, Berlin have been setting the bar for diversity, so its only logical that the top agency on the island Element Model & Talent Management did the same and take us by storm in presenting the first local model with albinism: Karla Mar Fernandez.
Model: Karla Mar Fernandez from Element Models. Photography by Ricardo Medina.
I’m eager to see her grace the runways and editorial pages of the region, I know she will have an outstanding welcoming in the industry.
By Aisha Naomi 