This Gorgeously Pregnant Model Just Proved Why a Baby Bump Belongs on the Runway
In the Eckhaus Latta world, unconventional casting has always seemed like a given, not a trend. “To have a bunch of one gender that’s the same race and height and size and fit, wearing similar clothes and makeup—I don’t think we were ever interested in that,” cofounder Zoe Latta explained. Today’s spring 2018 show in Bushwick once again cut a refreshing cross-section of their community, with familiar faces like redhead artist India Menuez and model Camilla Deterre, along with newcomers Alex Olson (Deterre’s pro skateboarder boyfriend), Barbara Ferris (whose son Latta is dating), model Paloma Elsesser, and the musician Kelela. But it was the artist Maia Ruth Lee who stole the show—wearing a pale lavender snap-front cardigan dress, unfastened at the middle to reveal her gloriously pregnant belly.
“Maia’s due next month!” the casting director Rachel Chandler said backstage. “She came in and tried on a look, and it fit”—give or a take a few strategic snaps. The two women are friends, but the idea for the atypical choice had a deeper root. “I just gave birth six weeks ago, so I think the pregnant person was just where my brain was at,” Chandler added with a laugh, scrolling through her phone for a photo of baby Wallace, who was en route to the show. Nearby, the model Hannelore Knuts held her young son’s hand as he played with an airplane toy. “We live a five-minute walk from here, so it’s easy,” she explained, gesturing down, as she mused on the brand’s inclination to push boundaries. “They dare to do those things, you know? They make their own world.” The gallery director Lucy Chadwick, another new mother, walked as well, wearing a two-piece white look and the day’s equally unconventional beauty gesture—streaks of a green clay face mask.
The result took the notion of “friends and family” casting one welcome step further. “It’s really beautiful just to see different stages of life,” Mike Eckhaus said, surveying the room. “It’s fashion, but there’s a sense of how it moves with you in all these different ways.” And Lee moved with all the power and grace of someone on the cusp of a commonplace miracle. “It’s always about inclusion,” she summed up of the Eckhaus Latta worldview. “I appreciate that.” Vogue Runway’s director Nicole Phelps did, too. “I’ve been going to fashion shows for 21 years and I’ve seen a pregnant model on the runway exactly one other time,” she wrote on Instagram alongside a snap of Lee, to more than 5,000 likes and counting. “Something to think about.”