Zawadi's Lounge: DEFYING THE STEREOTYPING, SHE IS A MODEL AT SIZE 26, WEIGHTING 136 KGS!!!!!

Velvet D'Amour, a New York native now based in Paris, tried to make it as a model when she was 21 years old but was deemed 'too fat' by agents at a petite 53 kgs. Ironically, the five-foot-eight-inch blonde went on to get her big break in French Vogue and on the catwalk for John Galliano and Jean Paul Gaultier, aged 38, weighing 136 kgs and a size 26.

For the past eight years she has been striving to 'push size acceptance along' and today unveiled the fourth issue of her diversity-focused women's magazine, Vol Up 2. D'Amour, 46, launched the quarterly publication in February last year in a bid to encourage women to embrace their 'imperfections' and be proud of their bodies. It features plus-size as well as mainstream models. Through working in fashion - as a model, photographer and now magazine editor - D’Amour has many thoughts on the status of modeling and the changes she would like to see happen.

She spoke in an interview 'The women we hold as icons of beauty are not happy. And if they’re not happy, who is happy. All the images that are out in the media are the same - the 16-year old white girl who is totally emaciated, with older women being excluded and different ethnicities never being shown.

D’Amour, the youngest of five children from Rochester, New York, said she always dreamed of being a fashion illustrator or designer and would look at 1940s photos of her parents for inspiration. I became obsessed with the more eccentric styles,' she says. But because the illustration field was dying out, D’Amour turned her hand to artwork, photography, and performance arts. 'At the time everyone was coked up and maybe 44 kgs. So I went down to 53 kgs and model agents said I was still too fat' She moved to Manhattan to study at the School of Visual Arts. With a great bone structure and long curly hair, people would often mistake her for a model. They’d say you have the face of talent,' she says.

IMG models showed interest in her, the same agency representing Gisele Bundchen, Heidi Klum, and Alek Wek, but D'Amour says she couldn't lose enough weight. At the time she tipped the scales
at a light 140lbs. 'At the time everyone was completely coked up and maybe ,' she added. 'So I went down to 117 and they said I was still too fat.' Feeling rejected, she went on to focus on photography, spending a year studying in Italy under American photographer James White before returning to New York.

Her big break came when she made headlines after appearing as a plus-size model in Jean-Paul Gaultier's Paris Fashion Week show in October 2006. She also made a catwalk appearance in John Galliano's runway presentation entitled 'Everybody is Beautiful' the same season, scoring her a spot in French Vogue shot by photographer Nick Knight. Critics have accused D'Amour of 'promoting obesity' but she insists she is healthy and has no high blood pressure or cholesterol problems. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she says she does not abuse drugs, alcohol or cigarettes.