Larger-sized women championed by London s cult leader of skinny, cobwebby knitted dressing? Unlikely but true, and when it came to it, Mark Fast courageously followed through on his convictions. "A lot of people think it s not appropriate to use plus-size models," he said. "But I met these girls and I loved their charisma. They re just jewels, you know?" He needed to keep his nerve about it. According to Amanda May, Fast s managing director, his show stylist quit over the designer s insistence on including three models from a plus agency on the runway amongst regular girls.
That incident is certain to detonate a media furor in which Fast may find himself accused of stirring up self-publicity—but anyone who encountered the soft-spoken 28-year-old Canadian backstage would pick up on the fact that he isn t like that. In any case, his status as an insider designer for hot women doesn t need any artificial push. Runway-side, what Fast s fans were actually focusing on was their next excuse to wriggle into something strategically holey to stretch across themselves. This season there was a move forward, vaguely inspired, Fast said, by watching twenties Egyptian silent-movie epics and Erin Brockovich. That could account, sort of, for the feathery fringed skirt on a scoop-neck dress, the sucked-to-the-body dresses (including a good one in lemon and beige), and an incendiary girdle and bra in cinnamon.
Still, Fast s attraction is more in his technique—and the way he thinks of his knitting as a close cousin of hosiery rather than sweater dressing. (Twinsets have never really been his thing.) In the long run, that small but notable fact about this ex-Saint Martins specialist could be crucial to a career path that might easily lead him into a lucrative future in leg coverings and underpinnings.
