October 7, 2016

Backstage at Belloya: fun, fashion, and fabulous women

Marianne Nykjaer plussize fashion - news 3 Comments

I’ve been dropping hints on my social channels here and there about exciting news that I have to share, and finally the cat’s out of the bag: I’m going to be working with a brand new fashion label, Belloya! I’m super excited to share my looks and inspiration with Belloya and you guys, and I was even more excited when I found out I was gonna do it with 2 of my favorite bodypositive peeps in the world: Edith from Stylehasnosize and Mayra from The Publisized. Here’s what’s been happening so far… and ofcourse the results from all the hard work we’ve been doing (semi-secretely) the past few weeks!

The bodylove journey

As you guys know, I have not always been confident. In fact, just a couple of years ago I was wearing stuff like white leggings and bolero’s, ashamed of my body. Then I started following other plussize women online and they inspired me to love myself more. Slowly I came out of my comfortzone and started to take more risks with fashion as well, and it’s all thanks to other awesome women inspiring me! Funny thing is, Edith and Mayra were both a huge inspiration to me when I just started out. They still inspire me, actually, just by being their awesome true selves. So it was not only a pleasure to work with them on this campaign, but also a bit of an honor. And I am so happy that the 3 of us will be able to inspire other women in their fashion and bodylove journey!

Bloggercampaign: wear it your way!

We each got to pick a couple of looks that we loved from the Belloya collection, and shot those looks for a blogger campaign. Edith’s style is very “granny fashion chique”, she always has a million accessories that she uses to give her outfits the Edith twist. Mayra on the other hand, is super chill and laidback, and she knows how to bring loads of attitude, personality and, well, just general coolness into her looks. For my looks, it all starts with the clothes. I don’t really do accessories in my daily style, so the look itself needs to be perfect on its own, and it was very important to me that I stayed true to who I was, so I chose very simple looks with a mix of class and sexiness (it’s what I do honey :p).

Together we shine: other women are not my competition

There were times when I thought “hm… isn’t my style too simple…”, especially if you look at the awesome looks Edith and Mayra were creating, but then I thought “this is just who I am and if people don’t like it that’s their problem”. One of the hashtags Belloya is using is #togetherweshine and I have to say that’s a GREAT concept cause I’m so tired of women constantly bitching and fighting and comparing themselves to each other… We are all bombass and beautiful in our own way, and there is room for ALL OF US to shine. Hell Yeah!

Picture report of the day

Anyway, here’s a little picture report of the day. Note that I’m in my underpants a lot. No worries folks, I haven’t gone nudist, it was simply a billion degrees outside when we shot this…

First fitting. VERY excited about this little black dress, more details on that one later on the blog!

 

Work work work work work work (note: sing this à la Rihanna to avoid looking stupid)

 

Edith in action, she added a bunch of pins to her blazer as well as other fun quirky details… So cool!

 

Squadgoals. No worries we look so much better in the final picture… Turns out, it’s surprisingly hard to get 3 people to look good in a picture at the same time. It probably didn’t help that we were talking and giggling the whole time.

 

Jup, feeling that red lace dress though…

 

Goofing around on set with Mayra. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in one day as during this shoot.

 

Underpants for President…but you don’t see them in the final result, pinky promise!

 

And… results are in!

You didn’t really think I was going to leave you hanging did you? Results are in, and I’m sooo happy with them!

I ended up picking the black lace dress (also available in navy), a black highneck pussybow blouse (it comes in 2 other colours as well), and a red lace dress (worn backwards. It’s a thing.) with a red coat (also available in a billion other colours). As you can see I kept it all very sleek and simple, staying true to my own style.

The final squadpicture. Look at us being sweet and cute (nothing like the badass troublemakers we reallly are :p)

Oh and speaking of #togetherweshine, ofcourse I had to share the results of Edith and Mayra too! Make sure to head over to Stylehasnosize and Thepublisized to read about their reports of the day and check out more of their pictures.

Edith from Stylehasnosize and her quirky, geeky-chique-meets-granny-fabulous style.

Mayra from The Publisized rocking that edgy laidback coolness like the queen she is.

So there you have it…

OMG GUYS WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Special thanks to: Belloya for the opportunity, all the killerbabes at IMA for their support and taking such good care of us, Melody Lieftink for the megapretty photography, Tricja Styling, Sabine for the gorgeous hair and makeup, Juul for the yummie catering, Edith and Mayra for being their awesome selves, everyone else who made this project happen and of course you, my lovely reader, for actually reading this to the end :p. You rock!

September 21, 2016

Why the new H&M video can go fuck itself.

Marianne Nykjaer plussize fashion - news 0 Comments

H&M released a video celebrating the diversity and beauty of women. In it we see bald women, strong women, women with natural hair, women of colour, older women, badass women, androgynous women,… Having fun and being unapologetically themselves. Which is awesome. The idea of the video in general is really awesome. Have a look here.

The video also features 2 plusmodels, size 16 Paloma and size 12 Katy, both gorgeous and awesome. They even start the video with an image of Paloma walking in her underwear. And that is where the problem begins. At first I thought it was so cool but then I was like, wait… hang on… Why are you using plussize models in your video when you treat your plussize consumers like crap?

opening shot: Paloma in her underwear

Hang on… but H&M has a plussize collection! That’s awesome right?

Yes, it is true that they have a plussize clothing line (H&M+). But that is where the good news stops.

Why H&M treats their plussize consumer like crap

• Their plussize collection is uninspiring and small: Their current plussize collection has about 150 pieces, mostly basic jeans and tops, while their regular women’s clothing line line has over 5300 items.
• Their sizing and fit is severely off, and despite consumers telling them this for years there has been no improvement.
• Their catalogue shows about 100 pages of straightsize fashion but only 2 pages for plussize.
• The shops that carry the plussize collection always put it somewhere in the back of the store, next to the pregnancy clothing, and only show a really small part of the collection (20-25 pieces).
• Designer collabs are only available for the smaller sizes, and “size diverse” collections that come in a bigger size carry the small sizes in store and the plus sizes are only found online.
• They have also started pulling plussize sections from shops, with the excuse that they don’t have enough space… but when even the biggest H&M in the world stops selling plussize clothing in store, you know that that is just a bullshit excuse.

Conclusion: they don’t like their plussize consumer. To me as a consumer, it feels like the plussize collection is just a little extra they do on the side, and squeeze some money out of, and that they can use in campaigns like this one so that they can say they are size-positive.

They’re not alone in this. A lot of brands want to dip their toe in the water of the plussize market, but none of them really want to go for a swim (I wrote about this earlier on here). And I am SO OVER IT.

Dear H&M. I like you guys for a lot of reasons. I am happy I can occasionally squeeze myself into some pieces of your straightsize collections. But you have not only lost me as a shopper of your plussize line, you have also angered me. You get away with this crap because plussize women are used to settling. We settle for ill-fitting clothes and being treated like second-class consumers because we can’t get any better. And that ends now. I’ll be taking my money elsewhere, because guess what: while you have been getting away with this, other brands have emerged and other retailers have stepped up their game. I no longer need to settle for this. To use us for publicity but then treat us this poorly is wrong.

The video you created is awesome, and I love the diversity of women. But if you’re not going to treat your plussize consumers with the respect they deserve, then don’t use us in your video’s either just because it makes you look good. We deserve better.