The viral strawberry dress
You definitely must have seen and heard about the “Strawberry Dress” if you have been regular on social media. A worldwide obsession has been triggered by fashion designer Lirika Matoshi. Her $490 Strawberry Midi Dress has gone absolutely-viral on social media. On TikTok, you can find countless videos of people happily opening their mail so they can try it on for the first time. It’s definitely not a regular dress. Its short sleeves puff outward like a freshly rich pastry, and its pink tulle is covered entirely in tiny sequined strawberries. It’s an amazingly beautiful dress.
The dress and the controversy
The popularity of the dress has also highlighted the fatphobia that still dominates the fashion world. Plus-size model Tess Holliday wore the dress on the red carpet at the Grammys all the way back in January. She said it resulted in so much criticism from the press. “I like how this dress had me on worst dressed lists when I wore it in January to the Grammys, but now bc a bunch of skinny ppl wore it on TikTok everyone cares,” she said on Instagram on August 17. “To sum it up: our society hates fat people, especially when we are winning.”
The dress has been worn by people of all body types
Bodies of all shapes and sizes, plus-size people have been interested in this dress for a while. Plus-size model Bree Kish has been wearing the strawberry dress on Instagram all year. She has prompted many of her followers to ask where she bought it so they could follow in her footsteps. Take a deep scroll through Lirika Matoshi’s tagged posts on the app and you’ll also find that curvy influencers including Susan Presley, Honey Ross, and Dani Sauter also wore the dress before it went viral.
A plus-size person’s account
Lirika Matoshi makes the strawberry dress only up to a size 16. Holliday’s dress was custom-tailored for her. This isn’t very inclusive by the plus community’s standards but is still better than the average designer’s range.” As a plus-size person myself, I can personally attest that it’s rare to find high-fashion pieces like this that are actually available in my size (and I’m a size 14, which is still smaller than the national average size for women). So when you do find them, you tend to latch on for dear life or you avoid them altogether because of the little voice in your head that says they won’t look as good on you as they would on your skinny friends.” Says Bree Kish.
