It’s 2025, and if you squint hard enough, fashion week looks suspiciously like it did in 2005. Waifish models strut down runways in Paris, Milan, and New York, draped in impossibly tailored silhouettes. Street style galleries celebrate the return of “effortless” dressing– a euphemism, often, for women whose clothes hang just so because their bodies have been whittled to fit the fantasy. The pendulum has swung back, and this time, it’s turbo-charged by a syringe.
In the late 2010s, the industry made loud, proud strides toward body diversity. Ashley Graham was on the cover of Vogue. Designers were expanding size ranges. Runways saw curves, rolls, stretch marks– a visual rebellion against the decades-long dominance of the ultra-thin. It was imperfect and at times tokenistic, but it was a shift nonetheless. Fast forward to now, and the celebration of all bodies has quietly softened into something more performative than real. Sample sizes are shrinking again. Casting calls look more homogeneous. And on Instagram, the girls who get bookmarked for their “style” often share one defining characteristic: their proportions, not their clothes.
The return of the ultra-thin ideal has been labelled “Ozempic-chic,” a cheeky nod to the weight-loss drugs that have become both whispered-about and flaunted accessories among celebrities, influencers, and industry insiders. Suddenly, jawlines are sharper, waistlines cinched, and the body-positive rhetoric of the past decade feels like a hazy fever dream. You could argue fashion is just reflecting culture, not shaping it– but isn’t that the oldest industry cop-out? Here’s the uncomfortable truth: our collective idea of what’s “chic” has always been inextricably tied to thinness. Think of the it-girls who set the tone for entire eras… Kate Moss in the 90s, the Olsens in the 2000s, the French girl archetype that dominates Pinterest boards. Their clothes were copied, sure, but their bodies were the real trend. Even the recent “clean girl” aesthetic, supposedly about minimalist dressing and dewy skin, landed differently on a size 0 frame.
When someone with a thin body wears an oversized shirt and ballet flats, she’s a street style star. When someone mid or plus-size does the same, she’s often met with unsolicited styling advice– or worse, invisibility. It’s not just fashion brands; it’s algorithms, editors, and consumers, all complicit in reattaching chicness to size. Ozempic and its cousins have only accelerated this. What once took punishing diets and relentless workouts can now be achieved (or at least approximated) with a prescription. The cultural effect is seismic: a collective narrowing of the visual landscape. Thinness is back– not as a conversation, but as an assumption. And while some designers continue to cast diverse bodies, the broader tone of fashion feels like it’s quietly retreating. You see it in the clothes themselves: ultra-low-rise skirts, micro shorts, sheer fabrics, and tailoring cut for bodies that don’t exist without extreme intervention. You see it in the language: “timeless,” “elegant,” “cool girl.” Phrases that sound neutral but, in context, often mean “thin.”
This isn’t a call to shame thin bodies– fashion should accommodate every size. But the industry’s selective amnesia is telling. For a while, we believed fashion had fundamentally shifted. Now, it seems more like it was simply distracted– dabbling in inclusivity because it was trendy, not because it believed in it. So, is she fashionable, or just skinny? In 2025, that question feels less rhetorical and more revealing. The answer says less about her and more about us: what we choose to celebrate, who we choose to see, and whether fashion’s so-called evolution was ever anything more than a temporary detour.
