Lots of strides have been made in recent years to make the runway more inclusive. A great debt is owed to designers like Becca McCharen-Tran of Chromat, Christian Siriano and Prabal Gurung for creating a shift. Still, it's a work in progress.
This fashion week, for the second time, lingerie brand AnaOno pushed the definition of inclusive, presenting an entire collection on models who were living, in one form or another, with breast cancer. AnaOno, which specializes in creating bras, underwear and intimates for individuals living with breast cancer, partnered with #Cancerland, a New York City non-profit dedicated to changing the conversation around the disease. So what does that look like in practice?
On Sunday of this week, thirty women walked down the runway in bras, underwear, corsets and skirts from the AnaOno spring 2018 collection. Some models were in their twenties; others in their fifties. Some counted themselves previvors, living with a hereditary mutation, a family history, or some other predisposing factor, others were living with stage I to stage IV metastatic cancer. Some were artists, others athletes, still others activists and writers.
And all were brave enough to show their bodies, uninhibited, to a crowd of more than 500. (While the show was primarily invite only, some tickets were available to the public, the sales of which benefited #Cancerland's network of breast cancer patients.) The presentation was hosted by Mira Sorvino, who was best friends with #Cancerland's founder Champagne Joy, who lost her battle with the disease in 2017.
"It's such an amazing thing to have these individuals walking the runway at NYFW, and not in just any lingerie, but made specifically for their unique bodies," #Cancerland board co-chair Beth Fairchild said in a statement." This year is especially difficult because we are forced to carry on without our beloved Champagne Joy. She led the charge for our movement to remove the pink shroud obscuring the realities of living with and dying from breast cancer. We're going to show the world that as patients, we stand together. We are the dangerous ones and we will no longer die silently."
