The Body Issue: Karoline Vitto on Curve Models and Consumer Demand
“People need shows for brand visibility, but they need to do them in a way that doesn’t break the budget.”
Karoline Vitto is a Brazilian-born, London-based designer renowned for her sculptural, size-inclusive approach to womenswear. Working across an extended size range alongside a custom offering, the brand places the female form at the heart of its design ethos, designing specifically for curvier bodies.
Vitto founded her eponymous label back in 2019, and since then, the industry has been through a whirlwind of change. From an inclusive “peak” in 2020 to the return of “heroin chic,” it has not been an easy journey for designers striving to create inclusive designs and push for a more representative industry.
For The Body Issue, Vitto tells us more about the story behind her brand, how her customer has changed over the last seven years and where she thinks the most meaningful change will come from.
Since Karoline Vitto was founded in 2020, what do you think has changed about the industry around it?
It’s crazy when I think about it; a lot has changed. I’ve seen the golden days of body positivity. I wasn’t one of the early adopters; other people were doing that before, but we were on the verge. Back then, there were brands —some of which don’t even exist anymore—like Parade, an amazing underwear brand that featured diverse models in their e-commerce. Commercial brands especially were showing diversity in their advertising and campaigns back then. For more independent brands, there was Sinéad O’Dwyer. At that point, the landscape felt really positive, like things were going to change for the better.
In February 2023, I felt a shift. On a casting level as a whole, many models in the industry had lost a lot of weight. That’s when I started to see the early days of GLP-1s. Then, it just progressively got worse. It became very established that a lot of people in the industry were taking it, but it was still very hush-hush; no one was talking about it.
Around that time, we interviewed you about the lack of fuller busts on the runway. How has that conversation progressed since then?
There’s an idea that if you have a smaller bust, you can go braless and look really cool and chic and fresh. I can’t fathom going out, especially in summer, without a bra or some sort of support. I look at that and think, what’s the real message here? At what stage of our lives do we have really small breasts, when we’re really young? That’s the only time I remember having them like that. People have different bodies, and of course some women are naturally like that- but it feels like that’s the favorite for some reason, which is strange to me.
How do you think the perception of the body in the last few years has impacted your design process? If models are getting smaller, has that changed the way you work?
First and foremost, we have to think about the customer. We can’t solely focus on the models because one of the brand’s purposes is to be commercially viable. At the bottom line, as a business. We have to respond to what customers are buying and where they’re at.
We used to have a wider size range (up to UK 28), and we’ve stopped selling the largest sizes in that range because a lot of our customers have changed. I stopped producing them because I simply can’t afford the cost of up-fronting and holding that stock anymore, without a clear path to sell-through. It’s not to say that the customer doesn’t exist, but within our brand, they’ve stopped buying some of these sizes. Since the larger sizes have stopped being bought for the most part, we stopped stocking them. We still make any size as made-to-order. And then the smaller sizes have gotten even smaller, so we had to adjust our grading process
Why has there been such a change? Because, as you said, it felt like there was a positive trajectory…
There’s been a real shift towards the extreme right wing, and towards this “tradwife” aesthetic in politics and culture generally. When you look at what’s being worn, early 2000s, late ’90s silhouettes are back, and the prevalent image is that everyone exposed in media or circulating in Fashion at that time was thin. If you’re skinny and don’t have much of a bust, that silhouette is perfect for you. But if you’re curvy, how are you supposed to wear that?
Looking to the future, where do you think positive change in body representation will come from?
There are a lot of everyday creators on TikTok fuelling the resurgence of what we had back in 2016-17. They don’t need to talk about it anymore; they can just be. We forget how powerful that is — just seeing girls with their stomachs out who aren’t a size six, who are more like what would be considered a mid or plus size, looking cool and confident in an amazing outfit — we forget the power of that. I’m hopeful that’s where things are heading.
What we also forget about is the logic of the fashion show itself. That’s why I really don’t think this change is going to come from big brands or from fashion shows. People need shows for brand visibility, but they need to do them in a way that doesn’t break the budget. And the most cost-effective, manageable way to do a show is to have everything cut in the same size. That’s the real reason fashion shows aren’t inclusive. It’s not necessarily that brands don’t want diversity; maybe upper management does want it in principle, but it’s a cost issue.
It’s a group effort, and let’s be real, that’s not going to happen overnight in Paris. If it comes from anywhere, it might come from smaller brands or maybe couture because that’s inherently bespoke. When you look at the brands that do it, the founders are all people who genuinely care. It’s people who are personally interested and love what they do. Not everyone has that same level of vested interest or personal experience attached. I think that’s what it comes down to.
