Ashley Graham is one of the biggest names in the world of fashion but not too long ago she struggled to even get a dress for the red carpet.
The body-positive supermodel made her debut at fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala, in 2017 wearing a dramatic one-of-a-kind H&M gown that served up a romantic ode to Comme des Garcon’s iconic designer Rei Kawakubo.
Except, she was actually meant to make her Met Gala debut the year prior but had to give it a skip for a very insulting reason.
The Met Gala, which is usually held on the first Monday in May every year, has been given the nickname the Oscars of the East and celebrates The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest exhibition and it has been reported that tickets go for a whopping $30,000 (€25,000) for what is in a sense the party of the year.
If you are going to be personally invited by Anna Wintour, you better dress for the occasion too.
It turns out that the supermodel had to miss out on the Met Gala in 2016 because no designer stepped up to the plate to dress her.
In an interview with The Cut, she revealed that she had been put ‘on hold’ in the months running up to the fashionable event and the invite subsequently fell through.
‘I couldn’t get a designer to dress me,’ she told the publication. ‘You can’t just turn up in jeans and a T-shirt.’
She contended that she was unable to get a dress because she didn’t have the right connections with fashion designers and there was not enough time to get something made for her.
Except, given her meteoric rise to fame and the fact that the Met Gala is seen as one of the biggest nights on the global fashion calendar, and a real cash-cow for designers really, it points to another pervading issue in the fashion industry and the very large elephant in the room.
The publication continued: ‘But likely a factor is that Graham is well out of sample-size range. To dress her requires extra work — she can’t wear something lying around in a showroom — and an exercise in imagination that not every designer wants to go on.’
It wasn’t the first time that brands had opted not to dress her either. Ashley reached another massive milestone in her career, one that any model dreams of, just months later as she graced her first-ever Vogue cover.
The beautiful brunette served up edgy elegance on the cover of British Vogue’s January 2017 edition, wearing Coach.
Except in the editor’s letter for the issue Alexandra Shulman, British Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief at the time, noted that brands ‘flately [refused] to lend us their clothes’ for the spread.
The editor explained: ‘It seems strange to me that while the rest of the world is desperate for fashion to embrace broader definitions of physical beauty, some of our most famous fashion brands appear to be travelling in the opposite — and, in my opinion, unwise — direction.’
Then, just two months later, Ashley made history as she became the first plus-sized model to feature on the cover of American Vogue.
The model-of-the-moment looked ravishing on the history-making cover, alongside a stellar cast of the fashion industry titans: Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, Liu Wen, Adwoa Aboah, Imaan Hammam and Vittoria Ceretti.
Her cover might have been boundary-breaking, but it was not without its flaws.
Fashion lovers were quick to criticise the fashion bible for a number of design choices with the most brow-furrowing one being that Gigi Hadid’s arm had been lengthened in post-production to make Ashley’s waist appear smaller.
With all this happening just weeks before the big night, it’s what made Ashley’s Met Gala debut all the more triumphant.
On the star-studded night, she served up Mediterranean high glamour on the red carpet in a dress that truly celebrated all her curves.
In an interview with Teen Vogue before the event, the model mum revealed why it was such an important moment for her, and it wasn’t just for the party.
‘In addition to spending the evening with those in the industry who I admire, I’m most excited to represent for the curvy women! It’s so surreal and it shows the industry is growing,’ she enthused.
Ashley Graham remains a leading voice around body diversity in fashion and her Met Gala debut was a big win in the fight against the systemic sizeism that is still alive and well across the industry globally.
In 2018, she upped the fashion stakes even higher rocking a custom-made blazer dress by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele.
The Met Gala always spurs style drama as Zendaya will know.
In 2019, Lindsay Lohan had real catty comments to share about her incredible Cinderalla moment.
