Women prefer to see what clothing looks like on bodies their size,…
LINDSAY GOLDWERT
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Underweight models might be bad for bad for business.
Ben Barry, a modeling agent, found that women were more apt to buy a pricy dress if it was modeled on a figure that resembled their own and not a super-thin “aspirational” body.
Barry, who wrote about his research in Elle Canada, found that designers are losing out on big bucks by only using one size model to represent their clothing on mannequins and in ads.
In a study of 2,500 women of all ages and sizes, he found that more women were willing to shell out money for a Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress after seeing how great it looked on a woman whose figure resembled her own.
That’s a lot of women walking away from the register that could be leaving with full shopping bags.
“My study found that women increased their purchase intentions by more than 200 percent when the models in the mock ads were their size,” he said.
The difference was even more pronounced in women larger than a size 6.
CURVES AHEAD! STATUESQUE SIRENS
“In [that] subgroup , women increased their purchase intentions by a dramatic 300 percent when they saw curvier models,” he said.
It’s not just self-esteem, he found. It’s a practical matter.
Women liked seeing models their own size to see how the garment hung and hugged different pars of the body.
Using only white models is another sales error.
African American women were 1.5 more times likely to make a purchase if they saw the dress on a black model.
Women over the age of 35 were 200% more likely to buy the dress if it was shown on a more mature model.
“Contrary to long-held marketing wisdom, fashion ads don’t need to lead women to aspire to an unattainable ideal to sell products,” he concluded.