Real Women on the Runway

FASHION - Its not that fashion models and supermodels aren't real, its just that they're not realistic compared to average working women these days.

Today Vancouver Canada based fashion designer Cheri Milaney created a first-of-its-kind runway show that stitches together real women and high fashion. She's chosen 22 average-sized non-models from a variety of careers to display her Fall/Winter 2009 collection tonight at LG Fashion Week.

The women he's trained are mothers, artists, teachers, entrepreneurs and cancer survivors.

"It's not just a runway show," says Milaney. The concept is intended to shake up the notion of ideal beauty, she says. "It's about bringing life to the clothing."

While not professional models, the models have each been given practice sessions on the catwalk by Ben Barry, the author of 'Fashioning Reality' and a modelling consultant.

Milaney hopes her stance will give the younger generation role models to look up to.

The name of Milaney's Fall 2009 collection, Viola, which means purple in Italian, also represents an instrument that can be associated with the natural curves of women.

To make the clothes fit women sized 2 to 16, Milaney takes into account the rise in the pants, the seams on the jackets and the way they drape over the body, details that both flatter the models and looks great.