Gone are the days of only tall, skinny and Eurocentric looking models – at least for College Fashion Week. This year’s show featured college-aged models, but that’s where most of the similarities ended. Too often, so-called diverse runways feature a tokenized representation of what the world actually looks like, but The Real Runway was surprisingly successful at representing what women really look like.
“The Real Runway is about every woman in this room – every person in this room –  seeing someone on the runway tonight that represents them,” said Her Campus co-founder Windsor Hanger Western. Having a runway as diverse as the audience at College Fashion Week is no easy feat, but seeing clothes on your body type is empowering. “Fashion should be about is making real women look good,” said Hanger Western. “We want it to be inclusive, we want it to feel like a representation of what you see out in the real world not some photoshopped trend of reality.”
The models embraced this attitude on the runway. For them, it seemed, that The Real Runway didn’t stop at physical diversity, it also meant showing their personalities as they walked. To College Fashion Week model and junior at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Carley Cox, being in the show meant “not trying to be  a Victoria Secret Angel or a real model, just being myself.”
Another student at the Fashion Institute of Technology that worked for the event, Gabi Breitenbach, said that The Real Runway meant “everyone embracing what their idea of the runway is.” In action, this meant fierce models rocked their attitudes, bubbly models strutted with a smile, and playful models made sure to get a laugh from the audience.
While this is College Fashion Week’s seventh run, most other runways still haven’t caught up to the diversity that The Real Runway brought. The Fashion Spot’s Fall 2018 Runway Report said that this was the most diverse season yet – but only when it comes to race and gender identity. Diversity in size, for example, dropped since 2016. So, it’s fair to be optimistic about where the industry is headed, but the notions about what a model should be are still pretty narrow.
The fashion industry as we know it is seemingly all about the photoshopped versions of womanhood which Hanger Western avoided during College Fashion Week. But outside of this event it can be incredibly frustrating to find real women modeling the clothes at popular retailers. If we want to see more real runways, Hanger Western said that we should be insisting upon it from all brands, “If you want inclusive, diversified runways, an inclusive, diverse world, just demand it from the brands that you shop from, demand it from the brands that you support.”
Diversity is an uphill battle. While it’s important to recognize the successes of The Real Runway, when representing womanhood and its nuances as a whole in just twenty young women, there are going to be some identities missing. That being said, continuing to demand more diversity from every brand, as Hanger Western recommends, is the only way to continue holding them accountable to their mission.
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(All images belong to Katie Malone and Molly Molloy.)