Gary Dakin, who runs the plus-size division of Ford Models was recently interview with the Times UK. Dakin represents some of the hottest plus-size models in the business, such as Crystal Renn, Ashley Graham, and Tara Lynn. He offers an amazing perspective on the fashion industry as a whole and the rise of the plus model.

Dakin also described the challenges he saw in the industry:

“A lot of people in the industry didn’t like these kinds of images,” told The Times about V’s plus-size spread. “A lot. They said the girls looked cataloguey, or fat. This is bullshit. These girls look amazing.”

“It’s been a struggle, for a long time,” he tells me. “Not so long ago people were dismissive. Nobody wanted to shoot the bigger girls. Nobody wanted to give it a go. This year has been the culmination of about ten years of not saying no.” Plus-size models were treated like provincial town football players who knock a ball about on Saturdays, especially since the early Nineties and the emergence of size 0 models. “I wouldn’t even tell people what division I was from. I’d call up the client and say, ‘I’m sending you this great girl!’ and when they’d seen her they would ring back. ‘But she’s plump! Why didn’t you tell us?’”

As a gay man, Dakin, then goes on to describe the understanding he has with plus-size models in the fashion industry:

“I’m a gay man. I’ve known I was gay since I was 8. I always think of that horrible, horrible joke: ‘God made gay men so heavy girls had someone to dance with at the school prom.’” He laughs and puts his head in his hands, momentarily embarrassed. “It’s the underdog mentality. As a gay man I felt I understood what these girls had been through in the industry.

You can read more about Gary Dakin on the Huffington Post.