The new beauty

When Amanda Gorman, former Youth Poet Laureate in 2014 at just 15 years of age, finished her speech with these wonderful words “For there is always light/if only we are brave enough to see it/There is always light only if we are brave enough to be it”, it became evident that these thoughts matched her body. With her tiny and beautiful appearance that told her story, together with her poetics. Why be surprised if a few days after Joe Biden’s fateful inauguration ceremony in Washington, IMC – the famous modeling agency that also manages Gigi Hadid and Gisele Bündchen – wanted her in its own portfolio?

This is the current panorama of fashion, attentive to inclusiveness and not just to aesthetic values, but which certainly determine a new concept of beauty. Thus also Ella Emhoff, “step-” daughter of Vice President Kamala Harris (she was the delightful girl in the pastel checkered overcoat and decorative white collar) received the same proposal from IMC. “At first my family was against the idea of me being a model. Then they realised the industry was changing”, she told the New York Times. And Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the designers of Proenza Schouler, after commenting that “she represents a new chapter in American history”, wanted her to be among the models protagonists of the runway video and the lookbook.

It is the usual clichés that are periodically questioned (and with a certain exhibitionism) by the Gucci guru, Alessandro Michele, whose models give rise to endless discussions on social networks. See the long debate on Armine Harutyunyan, an Armenian, whose unconventional features have sparked endless controversy. The same fate befell Tess McMillan, the curvy model of Simone Rocha’s campaign for H&M, whose soft lines are more attractive than a certain incredible thinness.
There is less talk about certain physical codes, as they are given as acquired, which could be linked to the dirty joke attributed to Silvio Berlusconi about Angela Merkel, putting Italian diplomacy in difficulty for the umpteenth time, despite the fact that it turned out to be fake news.

Already The Queen had tried to legitimise a big butt. “Fat-bottomed girls you make the rocking world go round”, but it was too early. Decades later Kim Kardashian arrived with her vast buttocks on covers around the world, ushering in the season of their redemption. And just for the record, the lady has 191 million followers on Instagram.
On the contrary, Chiara Ferragni, who has 22 and a half million followers, is an example of that blonde and well-groomed aesthetics whose authority derives from a long-limbed body, a charisma in the voice, a social position … All elements that make her a contemporary model of beauty. Like all influencers, she gives informal suggestions, explaining how she got on with this or that product, this or that deodorant, shampoo, moisturiser. Thus beauty becomes colloquial, credible, reachable. All you need to do is follow carefully the last tutorial.