Plus-Sized Models Laughed at/Jeered on Toronto Catwalk

Toronto Fashion Week

Toronto Fashion Week's Crowd Laughs at Plus-Sized Models

This is a bummer.

At a Toronto Fashion Week event, the audience laughed at the plus-sized models who were modeling clothes on the runway.

Not cool.

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Kevin Naulls, who writes about the fashion week events for the Toronto Standard, shared, "the prevailing attitude toward ‘plus-size' ... in Toronto sucks."

The fashion show was, in fact, for plus-size fashion, presented by Allistyle.

Allistyle created a plus-size line after designer Pam Shainhouse's daughter, Alli Shapiro, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, saw a dramatic change in weight.

Allistyle's clothing is designed to fill the void in the plus-size market, making stylish clothing in sizes 8 through 22, from bamboo and organic cotton materials.

Sadly, Shapiro died in 2006, but, Naulls writes, her "legacy lives on at Toronto Fashion Week."

A percentage of Allistyle's proceeds go to charity, too.

So, one would wonder, what all the chuckling at the show was about.

Naulls explains, "One gentleman spent the entire show laughing and hiding his face from the photo pit with his line sheet, while others exchanged barbs privately and cackled audibly. Even four different people were overheard talking about how poorly the women walked because they were bigger women on high heels."

Wow, fashion folks ... grow up.

Read: Plus Size Model Shows How Skinny "Real" Models Are

One of the Allistyle models commented on Naulls' post, writing, in part: "I was honoured to be walking in World Mastercard Fashion Week, and to be representing not only a cause I believed in, but a generation of women and girls who have been told that -- as is -- their bodies are not good enough.

Dear WMC Fashion Week, I am good enough. My body is worthy of fashion.

I'm a size 10. And I'm still a damn model. 40" hips and all. And I'd challenge the gentleman hiding his snickers behind the line sheet to call me on it."

It's a disgrace that the fashion world doesn't better celebrate all kinds of body types.