The print edition of this feature credits the wrong byline. This story was written by Jazmin Estades.
Sitting in the Brooklyn Museum’s skylit Beaux-Arts Court, Tevin “Milo” Evans paused after meticulously walking through the “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” exhibition. He stopped at each gown, appearing to sear each detail into his memory. He diligently took videos that captured every stitch and seam of the artwork that Mugler left to the world, only delaying his scrutiny to provide me with bits of Mugler trivia along the way.
Evans is a plus-size, Black male model known as The Fat Chuck Bass on social media. He has been featured in GQ France, A Magazine Curated By, The Portrait Project, Native Son, and is currently featured in “O,” an acclaimed book by photographer Luis Alberto Rodriguez. In addition to Evans’ work as a model, he is also a stylist for models and figures in the entertainment industry. While Evans’ achievements have established him as a prominent model and stylist within the fashion industry, being a Black, plus-size, queer model in fashion has made his path a difficult one.
Off the heels of Spring/Summer Fashion Month, Forbes reported fashion houses that cast two or more plus-size models for runway shows have declined by 24% since the last fashion month in February. The lack of representation among plus-size models was so abysmal that publications like British Vogue, the Cut, and The New York Times published stories calling the industry out for its lack of body diversity. According to Vogue Business, the Autumn/Winter 2023 season failed to make progress in terms of size representation on the runway. Evans believes this is a result of the minds behind the industry treating the plus-size movement as a trend that might be on its way out.
“People of a certain more palatable body type seem to be the ones who always book jobs because brands aren’t actually putting in the necessary effort to make their products accessible to a broad range of sizes,” Evans said..
Evans is just one of many who felt the blow from the lack of runway models last fashion season. Despite working with multiple brands, Evans was not invited to a single Fashion Week show or event. “It’s 10 times harder for me, off the bat, being at Fashion Week,” Evans said, “clothes aren’t produced in my size.” According to a research project conducted by LIM College, students in a “Call to Action: Inclusion in Fashion” course found that out of the 34,500 existing pictures on Getty Images, (0.4%) featured plus-size subjects across New York, London, Milan, and Paris Fashion Week.
On Evans’ podcast Broke and Privileged, he recently hosted Samantha Olson, assistant editor at Seventeen Magazine for an episode entitled Fat at Fashion Week. Olson recounted an incident at a Fashion Week event where she was asked by someone if her Chanel bag was real. When she said “yes,” he sniffed it to check if the bag was authentic leather. “Being plus-sized, having luxury, it is mind-blowing,” Olson said. “It’s like it doesn’t compute. That’s the one thing I get a lot of — like ‘How are you wearing this?’”
Evans’ experiences during Fashion Week are not always negative. There are times when Evans sees glimpses of what fashion could be. For last year’s fall Fashion Week, he was invited to go to designer Uni Park’s showroom, so he could be styled for their fashion show. This was the first time he was dressed by a brand for a Fashion Week event. At the showroom, the designer gave him a coat that would be featured in the show.
Evans quickly realized it was too tight, deciding that it would not be comfortable to wear. The designer managed to get him a hoodie to wear to the show, which Evans styled into an outfit appropriate to wear. “The difference here is that she tried to find things for me to wear. Yeah, obviously, a lot of these other designers would look at me and just be like ‘You know, we have nothing, and we’re not going to try,’” Evans said. “And that’s what it typically is for me.”
Growing up in Flatlands, Brooklyn, raised by immigrant parents from Saint Lucia, Evans grew up sheltered from the world. “Yeah, my mom didn’t feel comfortable with letting us go outside because obviously people are crazy,” said Evans. Through his sheltered upbringing, he found a release in Barbie.
“Barbie was like my first client as a stylist.” Through Barbie, Evans was able to project his dreams onto his dolls. “There wasn’t anything unattainable about Barbie, everything about Barbie was attainable. My parents raised me [like], ‘If you can dream it, if you can believe it, then you can achieve it, you can become it.’”
Evans has been a stylist for 10 years now. He got his start in modeling in 2017 after being approached by Underdog Men, a digital fashion magazine, to model for them after seeing his pictures on Instagram. “Different people just started to reach out. They were like ‘Hey, we saw the work that you did with so-and-so, and we’d like to shoot you.’ And, then it would snowball from there. Somebody else would reach out, and then somebody else would reach out. And, it was just really cool,” said Evans.
In February of 2022, Evans was asked to be photographed alongside his friend and fashion photographer Tarik Carroll. The magazine they were going to model for was collaborating with a major Italian fashion brand for that issue. “I was just like, ‘That’s absolutely amazing. Of course, I want to do it.’ This friend [Carroll] is someone who has been so amazing to me in so many ways.”
Leading up to the shoot, the stylist and creatives behind told Evans that both he and Carroll would be wearing custom swimsuits. He found out days before the shoot that not only was there only one bathing suit available, but the swimsuit sizes were based on photos from their Instagram feed and under the assumption that they wore a similar size, which was not the case. “I was then told that the hope was [that] I would be okay with just modeling nude while my friend would have on a bathing suit.”
Evans reached out to production and expressed that he was not comfortable shooting nude after being told that he would be clothed. He was then dropped from the shoot. Evans has been shot nude on multiple occasions, but this shoot was specifically to highlight clothing, and being naked would have defeated that purpose entirely. “I am totally fine with shooting nudes, but I am not about to shoot nudes for a clothing brand. Like how does that make sense? Especially when I was approached and told that I would be wearing clothes. So, it’s just like how could you not understand how I would feel the way that I feel,” Evans said.
After emailing the photographer and creative team regarding his firing from the shoot, Evans and the brand managed to work out a plan for him to participate. Carrol,l who isn’t used to being in front of the camera, decided to bow out of the shoot, which allowed Evans to shoot solo in the bathing suit. On the day of the shoot, the stylist did not show up. As a result, a friend of Evans had to assume those responsibilities, including trying to make the ill-fitting swimsuit appear to fit on camera.
Months later during last season’s Autumn/Winter Fashion Week, Evans reached out to the brand he had worked with for the magazine. To inquire about an invitation to one of their shows. After reaching out, the brand responded by saying that they could not make any accommodations for him. It was an especially hard pill for Evans to swallow considering the shoot for the brand was a layered experience.
Evans understands, more than anyone, the difficulties of being in front of the camera and brings that knowledge when he styles his clients for photoshoots. Evans styled Grace Duah, an actress known for her role as Shan on Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot, for a test shoot. The shoot came about after a conversation between Evans and Duah, in which she expressed her frustration with the makeup artist trying to make her look more Eurocentric by contouring her nose. “I remember talking to Tevin about it and Tevin being like, ‘Let’s do something that you don’t feel like you’re getting a nose job.’ You just feel like this is who I am; this is Grace at my purest self. He did such a good job of styling the shoot to emulate that, and I absolutely felt that,” said Duah.
“I think what’s interesting about styling for him is that it’s one of many offshoots that he uses to make people feel included,” Duah said. “I just noticed he tends to push for things in areas — whether it’s styling or modeling — where people are so exclusionary about everything. And he’s like, ‘I’m gonna stand here. And, I’m going to take up all this space, and I’m going to encourage my friends to come to stand next to me and take up space.’”
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