I’ve spent the last three years watching body positive clothing brands try to reinvent visual language, and honestly, it’s messier than anyone wants to admit.
The thing about designing for body positivity is that you’re not just selling clothes—you’re selling a feeling, an ideology, maybe even a quiet rebellion against decades of aspirational marketing that made most of us feel like garbage. I used to think it was simple: photograph diverse bodies, use inclusive language, done. Turns out the visual strategy is way more complicated, because every color choice, every font weight, every decision about whether to show a model’s face or crop at the shoulders carries this weird psychological freight. Brands like Universal Standard and Girlfriend Collective have figured out that minimalism reads as “serious,” as if to say we’re not a novelty brand for “plus sizes”—we’re just fashion, period. But then you’ve got brands like Loud Bodies that embrace maximalism, bright colors, chaotic patterns, as if to reclaim the visual space that fat bodies were told to vacate. It’s almost like there’s no single visual grammar for body positivity, which makes sense when you realize the movement itself contains multitudes.
Here’s the thing: the photography style alone reveals entire philosophies. Some brands shoot models laughing mid-movement, hair flying, because motion implies freedom from the static, controlled poses that traditional fashion demanded. Others use stark white backgrounds and serious expressions—almost editorial, almost defiant. I guess it depends on whether you think body positivity should feel joyful or quietly powerful, though maybe that’s a false binary.
The Color Psychology That Nobody Wants to Talk About (But Probably Should)
Pastels used to dominate the plus-size market, as if soft colors could somehow soften bodies, make them more palatable. Now body positive brands are split: some still use blush pinks and sage greens, but pair them with bold typography that undercuts the sweetness. Others go dark—charcoal, navy, black—which reads as sophisticated but also, let’s be honest, slimming. There’s this tension between wanting to be seen and the ingrained cultural programming that taught us to minimize. I’ve noticed brands like ASOS Curve toggle between both approaches within the same collection, which feels less like strategy and more like existential uncertainty. The research on color and body image is surprisingly thin, maybe because it’s hard to measure how a terracotta orange makes someone feel about their thighs, but anecdotal evidence from focus groups suggests that saturated, warm colors increase purchase intent among customers who’ve felt excluded by fashion. Wait—maybe that’s because warm colors are associated with approachability, or maybe it’s because they’ve been underused in plus-size marketing for so long that they feel novel.
Typography Choices That Whisper (Or Scream) About Worthiness
Sans-serif fonts dominate body positive branding, probably because serifs still carry this old-world, exclusive connotation—think Vogue mastheads and luxury brands that definitely didn’t make clothes in your size.
The letter spacing is usually generous, the weight often bold but not aggressive. Brands like Eloquii use thick, confident type that takes up space unapologetically, which feels intentional when your entire brand message is about taking up space. But I’ve also seen brands overcompensate with ultra-thin fonts, as if trying to signal “we’re elegant too,” and it reads as apologetic. The typography becomes a proxy war for respectability politics within the body positive movement itself—do we demand to be taken seriously by adopting the visual language of high fashion, or do we reject it entirely and create something new? There’s no consensus, which is either frustrating or exciting depending on how you feel about ambiguity.
The Model Diversity Spectrum and Its Weird Limitations That We’re All Pretending Not to Notice
Most body positive brands now show models across size ranges, which sounds great until you realize the “diversity” often stops at a size 22, or includes one mid-size model surrounded by smaller bodies, or features mostly hourglass figures because even within body positivity there’s a hierarchy of acceptable fatness.
I used to think representation was binary—you either showed diverse bodies or you didn’t—but the visual strategy reveals how brands are trying to thread an impossible needle. They want to appeal to customers who’ve been excluded without alienating customers who haven’t, so you get these carefully calibrated lineups where everyone’s technically “diverse” but also still conventionally attractive, still mostly able-bodied, still mostly young. The belly rolls are there but they’re soft, diffused lighting, non-threatening. There’s this visual sanitization happening that undermines the radical potential of the movement, but I also understand why brands do it—capitalism doesn’t reward radical moves, it rewards incremental shifts that don’t scare investors. It’s exhausting to watch, honestly, because the visual strategy becomes this constant negotiation between authenticity and profitability, and you can see the strain in every moodboard.
