The tents pitched up in Nathan Phillips Square for Toronto's LG Fashion Week act kind of like a bat signal for the fashionable crowd rather than altruistic comic book heroes. Everyone knows the fashion crowd type milling about the tents: super gorgeous, super rich and super skinny. Inside the V.I.P. lounge, though, everyone is throwing out their dainty manners despite the cocktails in hand and are shoving and elbowing their way to get a glimpse at a different kind of fashionista: Canada's Plus Size Model Search winner Brittney Fisher.

"Plus size fashion is coming out right now," Fisher announces in celebration. "There couldn't be a better time to bring it up [then LG Fashion Week]... It's got to be brought to people's attention that bigger women, plus size women are absolutely beautiful and we can dress in high fashion and look absolutely phenomenal."

This past November, when Reitman's Addition Elle and Penningtons partnered up with LOULOU magazine and Specs Model Management to create the contest, changing perceptions in fashion was exactly the intention for the event.

"We started this contest because we really wanted to show diversity in fashion," Trudy Crane, Vice-President of Marketing and Visual Presentation for Addition Elle and Penningtons says. "Our mission is to enhance the image of plus size women. So by doing something like this and showing different images and advertising and getting that out there, that was really our goal in this whole thing. We had such a response. Over 4,000 people did sign up to the contest so it was a fantastic turn out. Obviously people want to see other things."

The question lingering on everyone's mind at the cocktail party for Miss Fisher is whether the industry itself is ready to make that change. Marie-Josée Trempe, Specs Model Management founder, says the industry is prepared but it is also responsible for take the lead. Instead, the industry waits for governments around the world to regulate weight and size requirements, like in Spain.

"When I started the girls were always thin," Trempe says. "Now lately we've seen a lot of skinny models and everybody says it's not true. Yes it is true. And as an industry let's be honest and say it. It is a criteria in our industry, but there are also other ways to promote fashion and let's face it, when I look in a venue like this not everybody is a size two."
Brittney Fisher, a dancer and aspiring actress, now armed with a one year contact with Specs, a $2,500 wardrobe from Addition Elle, Penningtons and MXM, a national advertising campaign and photos in "LOULOU for YOU" (a plus size supplement in the publication) is ready to spawn that change. As she works the Victorian styled space she revels in a destiny fulfilled, having entered the contest on her best friend's mother's advice after moving back home to Vernon, B.C. from Vancouver. She's ready to be the role model that Crane and Trempe know she is already.

"This is what I'm supposed to do in my life and this is just a small step into the direction I want to go," Fisher says. "I'm so excited."

Written By: Carol Santos