The Beth Ditto fashion phenomenon

What's happening on planet fashion? The size zero flagelistas embracing a fatty? Not since the discovery and meteoric rise of Sophie Dahl the lovely, luscious plumpish supermodel has there been a visible fat person venerated by the industry - hope Beth is not going to shrink to minute proportions under the intense scrutiny. Indeed, it seems that many larger lovelys may benefit from her position of influence as her new collection for Evans is launched.

My question is why is the industry so obsessed with etiolated youth? In my experience most of their paying customers are (well) above a UK size 12 (US 8) and over 35, many are over 50. Surprise, surprise the vast majority of women want to look stylish, cool, sexy, chic, glamorous, professional, gorgeous, desirable etc - perhaps not all at the same time, but we all aspire to looking good. The population of the UK is ageing and it's generally older people who have the cash to splash.

Perversely the fashion industry ignores the needs and desires of the majority of women. What a shame and what a missed opportunity. There are so many amazingly talented designers who, if they turned their hands to designing beautifully cut clothes to enhance the curves of bigger women and cover the less desirable parts of older ones, could become real fashion phenomenons. So please, please lets have some real fashion for real women.