Fashioning A New Way

Faceless mannequins in stores have often symbolised how we should ideally look in clothes, rather than how they might actually look on us. As we explore the Autumn/Winter trends of the year, we turn the spotlight on five beautiful and independent women who #ShowUs what it takes to live by their own fashion and beauty rules

- Radhika Sen

Most of us have grown up in an age when glossy magazines and beauty pageants defined a social landscape where tall, thin models with flawless skin and hair were deemed to be the epitome of conventional beauty. Fashion trends that found their way into our closets were often a mere reflection of what’s considered appropriate for our body type. If the clothes didn’t look as good as they did on mannequins that grace store fronts, it usually gave way to feelings of insecurity.

The truth is we might not look like the mannequins in question, or the flawless images portrayed by the media with all our real body parts and human expressions, but that doesn’t make us any less attractive. Dove is here to change the narrow definition of beauty with Project #ShowUs – the world’s largest stock library created by women to shatter beauty stereotypes and showing women as they are, not as others believe they should be. We talk to five inspiring women about keeping it real and being confident in their own skin.

VINITA MAKHIJA,

Fashion Stylist