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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Style Has No Size

by

Richard Young
2195 days ago
20190722

Style has no size. Beau­ty comes in all shapes and sizes. It is ac­tu­al­ly quite passé and more so po­lit­i­cal­ly in­cor­rect to as­sume that on­ly thin is in. In this time when ‘lov­ing your­self to full­ness’ and the dis­cus­sions about body pos­i­tiv­i­ty fill the air, it is now lib­er­at­ing and cel­e­bra­to­ry to love ‘your curves and all your edges’. It’s not about what size you wear, it’s that you are one of a kind.

Fuller fig­ure mod­els are now rul­ing the roost mak­ing cov­ers of mag­a­zines and re­defin­ing stan­dards of good health and im­ages of beau­ty. Su­per­mod­el Ash­ley Gra­ham’s fight with Fox and ABC, for ban­ning her Lane Bryant Lin­gerie com­mer­cial, on the premise of her al­ter­na­tive stereo­type, rais­es the dou­ble stan­dards which plague our beau­ty/fash­ion in­dus­try and bear tes­ti­mo­ny to the ex­ist­ing di­choto­my with re­spect to beau­ty ideals.

Right here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, fash­ion buy­er, Lon­da Young, her­self a fuller fig­ure woman, loves cater­ing to “curvy ladies”, as she puts it. She points out that her con­sis­tent client is “a tad fuller-of-form, and as we wit­ti­ly say, “pul­chri­tudi­nous”. Op­er­at­ing from her fash­ion hub, Lon’s Fash­ions, she ral­lies a spe­cial clien­tele ㅡ a wide cross sec­tion of fash­ion­able and, for the want of a bet­ter word, ‘ma­ture’ women who leave it up to her to shop for them.

This vi­va­cious fash­ion buy­er prides her­self on se­lect­ing one-of-a-kind trend­set­ting en­sem­bles, con­ver­sa­tion-open­er co­or­di­nates and in­di­vid­ual state­ment pieces which speak to the fash­ion tastes of our cos­mopoli­tan di­ver­si­ty. On oc­ca­sion, I stop by her Barataria out­let, a nerve cen­tre ‘lim­ing spot’, of sorts, to vibe from the spawn­ing of a slew of fash­ion­able ex­change - health tips, holis­tic reg­i­men in­sights, styling ad­vice, im­age con­sul­tan­cy and on-call fit­tings of her re­cent im­ports, all fu­elled with in­ter­ac­tive com­men­tary and con­fi­dence-boost­ing ca­ma­raderie. I swear Lonz, as she is af­fec­tion­ate­ly called, is a lo­cal ma­tri­arch of a fash­ion par­lour quite sim­i­lar to those eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Parisi­enne so­ci­ety sa­lons, where new trends were de­ter­mined and em­pow­er­ment ini­tia­tives were for­mu­lat­ed.

One such ini­tia­tive, she plans to host at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza on Au­gust 4th, at 5 pm. Lonz be­lieves that fash­ion and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty go hand in hand. She gives new mean­ing to the adage “style comes in all shapes and sizes” and stress­es that we should ap­pre­ci­ate the con­cept of ‘one-of-a-kind beau­ty’, in its fullest con­text. She has set in mo­tion a dri­ve to as­sist In­spired Minds In­sti­tute, a school of ex­tra­or­di­nary chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. She sees them as tru­ly one-of-a-kind chil­dren.

The prin­ci­pal of the school, Nadi­ra Muham­mad, is thrilled that Lonz has cor­re­lat­ed her per­son­al con­cept of fit­ting the unique needs of her client-base with the out­fit­ting of the spe­cial needs of this in­sti­tu­tion. In so do­ing, she is serv­ing to raise aware­ness of the In­sti­tute’s mis­sion as well as to raise funds to equip the school with es­sen­tial in­fra­struc­ture. “One size does not fit all, for style has no size,” she quips. “We all have to do our part to make a dif­fer­ence, to love our­selves to full­ness.”

The pre­sen­ta­tion, ‘I’m Style, Ir­re­place­able me’ will fea­ture plus-size mod­els in one-of-a-kind looks, com­ple­ment­ed by styl­ish ready-to-wear com­pos­ites for straight-size mod­els, all avail­able at her un­com­mon bou­tique. Sup­port­ing fash­ion hous­es for this dis­tinc­tive ini­tia­tive are the sar­to­r­i­al Caribbean swag of DAWW Cre­ations’ menswear by be­spoke tai­lor, Mar­lon George, and the trail­blaz­ing Afro-Caribbean style of Ma­hogany Stuff by fash­ion de­sign­er, Ju­lia Clarke, un­der the cre­ative di­rec­tion of yours tru­ly.


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