Crystal Renn, Paulina Porizkova

When Crystal Renn and Paulina Porizkova shared a panel at Glamour's Women of the Year Conference in New York this week, they did a bit of teamwork to teach a lesson about the size debate in fashion. While Renn was speaking, Porizkova interrupted her, saying: "Excuse me, I have to do this. Crystal, can the two of us stand up next to each other for a moment, so that the audience can see us?" After Renn accepted, Porizkova placed herself next to the champion of the "plus-size" model movement. Porizkova continued: "I'm pretty much the same size now that I was in the '80s, when I was actually modeling, and I was known for doing bathing suits. Here's Crystal, a plus-size model,. This is a plus-size model in 2010. This [Porizkova pointed to herself] is an average-size model in 1980. Times have changed.”

Although the two were similar in size, Porizkova might have been slightly bigger, making it even more shocking that the definition of "swimsuit" has shifted to "plus-size" in just a few decades. Renn had plenty to add: "What I would like to see is a bunch of different-sized models in fashion. Right now, we have extremes. We have size 2s and size zeros, and then over here we have size 14s and 16s. What I would like to see happen is that you watch the runway, and you see all different sizes — you see 2s, you see 4s, you see 6s, we see 12s and 14s. Then there's no controversy about body size. Then it's all about the clothes."

Read more after the jump

The term 'Big is Beautiful' is not one that is often used in the same sentence as high fashion runway models. Since the tragic deaths of Luisel Ramos, Anna Carolina Reston and Hila Elmalich, who starved themselves in their bid to forge a career as supermodels, we have been waiting for the 'size zero tide' to turn in the fashion industry. It would appear that the backlash has begun and it seems as though the recession, of all things, could be the main reason behind this shift in attitude. 'In periods when we are impoverished, as now, there is a vogue for volumptio women', said Stephen Bayley, author of 'Women as Design'.

Designers would also appear to welcome this change if the views of the likes of Roland Mouret and Antonio Berardi, are anything to go by. Mouret told the Guardian, 'back in the Eighties, when supermodels were several sizes larger than top models today, the clothes worked on bigger bodies.... and were curve-enhancing'. Berardi has also confessed that he doesn't 'want all those girls with pale skin who look the same. My family is Italian. I am inspired by a womanly aesthetic'. A good case in point is Lara Stone, one of the most successful girls out there, who has booked a record amount of work in recent months and has even added Prada to her ever growing CV.

Does this prove that there is a place for the curvier model in the fashion industry?