Paloma Elsesser is driven off Instagram following Model of the Year win

Across the last five years or so, Paloma Elsesser has risen up out of the Brooklyn to become a bonafide new-gen supermodel. From making history at houses like Fendi, Alexander McQueen, and Balenciaga, to covering mags from Vogue to Perfect to Red3licte, the 31-year-old is one of a small handful of models carrying the weight of the fashion industry on her back when it comes to representation of larger bodies.

At this week’s British Fashion Awards, she took home the award for Model of the Year and became the first plus-size woman ever to do so.  But what should have been a moment for celebration, and a pivotal moment for the industry, instead became a nightmare for Elsesser, and eventually drove her off social media.

While plenty of people on Instagram were quick to jump in her comments to celebrate her win, and the wider impact it will hopefully have on the industry, social media was also swarmed by trolls and haters, and a wave of derogatory, fatphobic comments. Before deleting her account, she posted a story saying: “Grateful for so much of the love. I also see the hate. Taking a moment to enjoy this accolade privately. & as always, free Palestine.”

As fashion blogger HauteLeMode said in a video, “Congratulations, you’ve done it – you’ve run Paloma Elsseser off of Instagram for what? Winning a reward she had no control over? [...] There were a bunch of models that in reality I maybe would have wanted to win more as much as other people, but would I go to Paloma and say you’re an awful terrible person and you didn’t deserve that? No, because that’s crazy, and I have better things to do in my life than hold grudges against people I don’t know!” He went on to say that Paloma was a worthy winner, as much as anyone else would be, “because they’re all great for different reasons.”

According to an article she recently wrote for Vogue, Elsesser chose to dip out of the AW23 fashion eason off to have surgery which she’d been putting off for years, and also because she was “burned out and feeling the fatigue of the industry”. In choosing to step away, she hoped that she would be creating a space to be filled by up-and-coming plus-size models but, to her disappointment, this didn’t happen. Instead, she saw “an unapologetic propensity towards thinness”.

This is why she felt a responsibility to return to fashion week: “To show up and create a continued conversation for others to come with me, an undeniable momentum that keeps growing”. As HauteLeMode has argued, this decision is just one reason among many why she is a more-than-worthy winner of Model of the Year.