Plus-Size Models Get Naked for a Cause

The models in their underwear: Photo: Icelandic Glamour / Silja Magg.
The models in their underwear: Photo: Icelandic Glamour / Silja Magg.

Professional models taking it all off for a photo shoot isn’t new - but undressing on their own accord?

That’s slightly more unusual.

In an effort to normalise the idea of models (and in turn, women) having a wide array of industry-accepted body types, IMG models Ashley Graham, Danielle Redman, Marquita Pring, and Julie Henderson launched a modelling collective in 2014 called ALDA (which means ‘wave’ in Icelandic).

The models sans clothes. Photo: Icelandic Glamour / Silja Magg.
The models sans clothes. Photo: Icelandic Glamour / Silja Magg.

According to its mission statement, ALDA’s goal is to “challenge conventional notions in the fashion industry and promote a holistic view of beauty, via opportunities without categories, labels, and limitations.”

One way they’re trying to raise awareness? By posing as a group, both fully-clothed, in their skivvies, and in the buff, for the latest (and second ever) issue of Glamour Iceland.

Related: The 11 plus size models you need to know

By showing off their curves - and non-curves, alike - as a unified group, the models are proving that potentially career-harming labels like “straight size” and “plus-size” (and especially the dreaded “in between”) are truly in need of being abolished.

With the growing focus on promoting healthy bodies in the fashion world today (see: new laws in France and Spain banning underweight-models from walking the runway), we’d say ALDA’s cause is certainly one worth supporting.

RELATED: Can this Calvin Klein Model Really be Called Plus-Size?

Maybe then, “plus-size” models could finally stop wearing padded undergarments…