On February 6th, Charli Howard and Clementine Desseaux led the second unveiling of their All Woman Project at Aerie’s Pop Up store in SoHo.
Complete with cocktails, clothing sales, and DJΒ Atlanta De Cadenet Taylor, the event was a great success and drew a big turnout. Dressed along the walls were the new campaign pictures photographed by Heather Hazzan, and quotes from the featured models themselves. The All Woman Project is an editorial campaign featuring inspiring and diverse women of all ages, sizes, race, and sexuality, who haven’t beenΒ photoshopped.
When Charli Howard was dropped by her agency for being too big by their standards she set out to create a campaign of self-love and body positivity.
In 2016 she joined forces with friend and plus sized modelΒ Clementine Desseaux to create a campaignΒ that wouldΒ enhance the message of body positivity and self-confidence.
Aerie has had a mission as a brand toΒ forego retouching of their ads and campaign photographs with it’s #AerieReal Campaign. The clothing and intimates brand has stressed the importance of self-love since 2014.
AerieΒ Real Role Model Iskra Lawrence and MUSE’s Mari Agory, surfer Quincy Davis, among others modeled in the second campaign.
Singer Daya, actress Peyton List, and Caila Quinn were also in attendance to helpΒ celebrate, share their version of the campaign’s message, and to embrace diversity.
We sat down to interview the campaign modelsΒ and event attendees. The All Woman Project’s founders and campaign talentΒ Charli Howard and Clementine Desseaux, along withΒ models Mari Agory, Iskra Lawrence and “The Bachelor’s”Β Caila QuinnΒ talked about the importance of body positivity.
Mari Agory
What does it mean to you to be apart of this project?
Mari Agory: This project has been really emotional for me because I’m pregnant and weβre talking about woman empowerment, women strength, and also you know trying to redefine the definition of beauty and not just what is in mainstream. So I was telling my fiance the other day actually Iβve been really fascinated with the change of my body throughout the last couple of months. Itβs really allowed me to have a newfound respect for a woman in general and my mom and just women. Women are responsible for so much for our civilizations how weβre Β all here. So to be apart of this project while Iβm pregnant is just really spoken to me on such a profound level because Iβm recognizing, I’m experiencing … also alongside recognizing, the strength and the power of the woman and weβre capable of doing and what our bodies are capable of doing. What this project is about is allowing women to recognize their strength, and allowing them to find that within themselves and recognize that weβre beings that are far more capable than things we canβt even fathom and think about. And weβre not taught that in mainstream and weβre not taught that in Β school so I’m not only advocating for it but iβm experiencing it, itβs been coming so natural.
When did Charli and Clementine approach you about getting involved withΒ thisΒ campaign?
Mari Agory: Well Charli is actually with my agency, so we have the same agency and our agent, she was in another division, and the president of our agency approached me about it and like I was just saying he just felt that me going through this pregnancy and you know this project, and he told them a little bit about me and my work and that Iβm pregnant right now and I jumped on it and it was just kind of a perfect marriage in way.
What do are yourΒ hopes for this project in the future and what do you hope it teaches women?
Mari Agory: For it to keep going! We need more projects like this. We need more women’s forums, we need more ways for women to connect with each other because I think we are the only ones that can teach each other what weβre about. Men donβt really understand us yet, yes they understand us to a certain extent, my fiance understands me but to a certain extent. But I think when women come together, when they individually recognize their power and their strength, itβs one thing. But when we come together and collectively recognize this thing within us, this fierce rage for a wonderful cause or great life purpose itβs like a force to be reckoned with so I Β hope it keeps going and I hope it keeps reaching out to women that are not represented in the fashion industry or in mainstream media. We need to inform women out there that weβre all unique in our own ways and regardless of how different we are, I mean I grew up very different and I didn’t really think that I was beautiful because I didnβt see myself in magazines, and I didnβt see myself in advertisements, I didnβt see myself on tv, or women who look like myself, and with projects like this weβre doing our part and if it continues to happen people will still continue to pick up on the wave and get on board with us and getting this point across to people.
Clementine Desseaux:
How does it feel to see this whole project come to life?
Clementine Desseaux: Itβs been amazing. Weβve been working so hard on it and obviously getting here and seeing this store transform with like these beautiful, diverse images all over the place I cried the first time when I walked into the store this afternoon and when we had this like Facebook live and we talked to younger girls, and students that came to see us and it was awesome. They were so into it and theyβre so happy seeing themselves more represented and see that other women are fighting for them and it’s amazing. Itβs inspiring and thatβs what weβre trying to create.
How did you get the idea and when did you approach Charli to collaborate on this?
Clementine Desseaux: So our agent at MUSE introduced us because we were both having a blog and doing some work around diversity and we both had tea and we chatted, and we both had the same vision–an editorial campaign that would be so diverse that we could both model in it and thatβs something thatβs never happened before because she was trade size I was plus size and we never had the chance to model together on the same type of campaigns we kept talking about it and we thought why not make our own? And we showed them that itβs possible to something great, to do something high fashion with different body types and colors. We called all our friend Iskra Lawrence, Mari, and all our really good friends and they were like βof course, we’ll do it!β and then we were like alright well and then Β we i like I guess Charlie itβs on let’s do it, and then we started recruited a few more girls that were missing so our main thing was for them to be diverse and having a voice, using their voice in a positive way, so we found those girls and we didnβt really have any plan for it, we just had some friends at Vogue who were like hopefully theyβre going to want to talk about it and then it become huge and then everybody talked about it and we were like I guess weβre doing something right. Then we were like okay itβs time to plan that second one because we started getting emails like βthis campaign change my life, and I want my daughter to see that and people were asking us when is the next one what are you doing next to change how society is and how girls see themselves.β We had so much work to do and so a couple months ago we turned it into a charity because we want to go into schools and were trying to raise funds to go to school, take our team and create workshops and send advance groups into school to allow them to actually speak about those things and about woman empowerment and encourage them to create their own movement. Weβre going to start really soon and weβre really excited. So many schools are requesting us to comes–about 150 in the past few months so we know it’s needed so weβre just to figure out how to make it work and how to get to those schools more often than just twice a year, Fashion Week. We want to always be there and we want the All Woman Project to inspiring and pass the message along.
Did you find the other models at the agency?
Clementine Desseaux: So for this edition we used Iskra again because sheβs one of our best friends and sheβs also the aerie role model, so that was a perfect fit. Then Paloma is also a really good friend sheβs with MUSE too, as well as Amari, and then we just looked up all the other girls because for the first project a lot of girls were transferring other girls of women they love, so we just started there and focused on who the audience wants to hear about so looked at those girls. And then we found Quincy, sheβs a surfer. I had never heard of this girl but sheβs awesome and she already goes to school in Montauk talking about what she does so she was perfect and Holy we found through our PR agency and she has this program called Lifted thatβs makes girls work out and feel good so she was perfect and so then we cast them in a couple weeks and it was back.
Whatβs the main message you want to send students when you visit their schools?
Clementine Desseaux: Well itβs body positivity but really itβs just to love yourself first because. Something that we all had in common in All Women Project is that we didnβt love ourselves first growing up and we didnβt have any role model to look at so thatβs our main goal. We want society to give young girls enough models, role models and letting them know that theyβre enough.
Caila Quinn
What does being here and being apart of this campaign mean to you?
Caila Quinn: I love the whole idea of woman empowerment and showing your true beauty through your smile, like thatβs totally me. I donβt know if you watch The Bachelor but Iβm all about the smile. And you I donβt think anyone is ever hiding behind a smile, if you smile too much. I think that shows an inner confidence so I love this campaign because it’s promotes inner confidence in women which we need more of and we need to support each other more.
When little girls seeing these models, what do you hope that it teaches them?
Caila Quinn: You know I hope it teaches them to see a natural beauty within themselves and just find qualities that theyβre proud of and let that shine. I must say that growing up as a little girl i didnβt have a lot of diverse figures to look up to so the fact that this represents every girl of every body size, every color kind of warms my heart because itβs something that I didnβt grow up with which I think is amazing.
Charli Howard
Where did the idea for this campaign come from and what does it mean to you?
Charli Howard: I came to NY last year and I Β really struggled with my size I was dropped from agency in London for being too big when I was a size 2. Then came to NY and I saw this plus size division and I was like what is this? So Clementine and I met up and we thought weβd do this editorial where we combined straight sized models and curved models. Now Iβm kind of bordering on curves myself, itβs become more about diversity and that kind of thing and we just want to keep going and keep representing girls from all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, and sexualities, everything–so thatβs what we really want to do.
Where did you find the girls to be in the campaign?
Charli Howard: We scoured them everywhere. We get so many emails from girls saying Β like βHi, check me out,β and thatβs really helpful. And then we go over Instagram, Twitter, we pick up magazines, we look everywhere. Β They all have to be inspiring, they canβt just be pretty faces they have to be interesting too.
Clementine talked about you guys wanting to go into schools to teach your message. Can you expand on that?
Charli Howard: We want to just meet young girls. We truly believe that all this Β self-love and body acceptance starts at a very young age and it starts with schools.
What are your plans moving forward?
Charli Howard: We are going to keep going with it. We are going to keep getting loads of amazing pictures, meeting loads of amazing women and continuing to spread the message because itβs a movement to us.
Iskra Lawrence:
What does it mean to you to be apart of this campaign?
Iskra Lawrence: Iβm really proud because these are two of my friends and they put together the All Woman Project. Regardless if Iβm in it or not, just to see high-quality editorial images of diverse ages, size, shape, and color. Itβs what you want to see. It feeds your soul and itβs just so nice to have that now. And I think sometimes you have to demonstrate things to an industry for them to kind of be like βoh well it can be doneβ and people do want to see this, so hopefully this will help this movement move along.
What do you hope this campaign will teach little girls?
Iskra Lawrence: I want every little girl know that she doesn’t have to be perfect. What makes her beautiful is being diverse and seeing images like this, instead of looking at someone else and thinking I wish I looked like that. No– she is beautiful because of that, but you are also beautiful because you have your own special abilities and gifts.
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Credit: Michael Simon
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Credit:Β Heather Hazzan
