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Did you know that All Walks’ very first campaign was going to be a one off? Susan Ringwood, of eating disorder charity Beat, posed the question “Is it possible to show fashion on a range of inspiring bodies?” Our Co-founders, Caryn Franklin, Debra Bourne and Erin O’Connor, absolutely believed that the answer is “Yes!” – fashion can and should celebrate body and beauty diversity, and so they gathered together a group of the best creatives the fashion industry had to offer and set out to prove it!

Co-founder Debra Bourne:

“We wanted to create a conscious conversation about the lack of diverse messaging that the fashion industry was sending out into the world. Whilst the industry’s public reach may have become immense globally, its beauty ideals were beyond narrow and eurocentric.”

“Our goal was to engage the industry we had grown up working in; one that we all loved and respected for its immense fun, vision, craft and creativity, and one that we hoped might be willing to acknowledge the larger power it also has in communicating to women about their bodies, as opposed to just about their clothes.”

Debra, Caryn and Erin were confident that the fashion industry could - and, at its best, already did - promote diversity, but nothing prepared them for the overwhelmingly positive reaction and outpouring of support from the industry that this first campaign produced. That settled it; this issue was important to women (and men) everywhere and, somewhat surprisingly, to huge swathes of the fashion industry itself. There was nothing for it, the campaign must go on!

To coincide with the launch of Be Real, a government sponsored body-confidence campaign of which All Walks are a lead ambassador, as well as the 2014 Body Confidence Awards held at Parliament, All Walks celebrated 5 years of tireless campaigning for diversity in fashion.


The team at Parliament for the 2014 Body Confidence Awards

Celebrating across our social media channels

To celebrate 5 years of amazing people, projects and progress, we hosted a mini retrospective across our social media channels, on Facebook/AllWalks, Twitter @AllWalksCatwalk and Instagram @AllWalksCatwalk. You can see all the tweets using #AllWalks5yrs, but here are just a brief selection, one from each year of All Walks!

2009: Nick Knight and Erin O’Connor shoot our first diverse model line-up

2010: Giles Deacon was one of nine designers to create a bespoke dress for our Snapped campaign

2011: All Walks host the most successful ever Late Shift at the National Portrait Gallery

2012: All Walks initiate the first ever Body Confidence Awards and Mark Fast wins the Fashion Pioneer award

2013: All Walks supporters Daniel Sims and Sophie Parker shoot Mix It Up live at Graduate Fashion Week

2014: Susie Bubble presents awards to the winners of our national student competition Diversity NOW! at Graduate Fashion Week

Just a few examples of industry support on Twitter: