It could sound insensitive to describe the size-18 Darrianne Donnelly as a larger-than-life character. But the woman who converted a big frame and even bigger personality into big commercial success isn’t likely to quibble.
The founder of the Terrey Hills-based Big Gals Model Agency is one of the real pioneers of the plus-size modelling movement in Australia. She was one of the first larger models to hit the catwalk after she managed to talk her way into the industry, then set up the country’s first dedicated plus-size agency 12 years ago.
In those 12 years she has spoken to hundreds of girls who dream of becoming models, but apparently it was never a dream she shared at the same age despite growing up on a diet of comments such as: “Darrianne has such a pretty face, she could be a model if only she lost some weight.”
She was 30 and had two of her three children when her thinking changed.
“Iwas shopping at Chatswood and I stopped to look at a fashion parade where they had shop assistants modelling the clothes and I thought, `My goodness, they’re the same size as me. I could do that job.”
” I thought if someone was actually trained to walk properly as a big girl and the clothes fitted like they should, then maybe there was an opportunity there, so I approached the compere after the show and she said, `Fabulous, let’s get you trained up’.”
Darrianne Donnelly now professes to be very comfortable with her 178cm height and evenly-proportioned shape but the journey to self-acceptance clearly wasn’t easy. “Growing up, it was very difficult because, being the bigger girl, I was never picked to be in the team or in the performance,” she said.
” There were many occasions when I just used to cringe. I had to buy my school shoes in the boys’ department because they never had shoes big enough in the girls’ department and I couldn’t buy my first pair of jeans until I was 15.”
For someone with a real interest in fashion, the lack of choices for bigger sizes which she is pleased to say has changed dramatically in the past decade was endlessly frustrating.
“The classic example was my own wedding,” she said. “I went to shop after shop to try on bridal gowns but they had no samples in my size. At that stage I was 14-16, so I had to take my size eight friend to try them on and then envisage what they would look like on me.”
She said through all that, her naturally outgoing personality and her self-esteem took some big hits, but they were never entirely squashed and eventually things began to change.
“I think I probably looked in the mirror one day and decided I wasn’t going to make my life a misery based on what other people thought I should be or look like,” she said. “I think the process happens over a period of time where you start to realise there is more to life than wasting your head space on what you have been given.”
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