Down-to-earth beach babe Bree McCann is the ultimate Aussie girl next door. As the first curve model to grace the cover of Women’s Health and strut her stuff along the runway at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, McCann is championing change and more diversity in the industry. “The population is so diverse and that should be reflected in fashion,” McCann, 31, tells WHO.
But don’t get her wrong – she knows that promoting body diversity can come across as clichéd. “Sometimes I do feel like a little bit of a broken record,” McCann admits. “But I also realise that if we don’t keep talking about it then it’s not going to change. It’s something that we have to keep challenging and keep pushing forward and eventually we’ll get that.”
McCann, who is the first Australian ambassador for Fossil, reveals she never thought she’d be able to have a career as a model because she didn’t have the typical ‘look’. “I got scouted a few times when I was a teenager, but I had friends that were modelling in high school and I knew how tiny you had to be if you wanted a career in that world,” she says. “I was very active and I played netball and basketball and I swam, and I was always a proportional shape, but I was definitely curvy – I just knew it was never going to be possible to be super tiny.”
But a bold decision for McCann to head overseas to work as a curve model in London while she was studying business management and journalism at university led to the now highly sought-after model’s successful career.
“Originally I went overseas because there wasn’t really that much work for my size in Australia. There was just so much more work in the US and in Europe,” says McCann, who has spent the last five-and-a-half years working in New York.
Now back Down Under with no struggle to find work, McCann admits she’s seeing a big shift in the industry. “I actually went to New York earlier in the year to cast for Victoria’s Secret. I know that at least five curve girls were called in – so the fact that they are doing that, I think that even the brands that were really slow to change are starting to get the point.”
Additionally, McCann concedes that industry terms like ‘curve’ and ‘plus size’ are outdated. “I don’t think women need to be labelled and I just wish it wasn’t even a thought,” she says. “In the beginning of my career I felt the need to specify that, but I definitely feel like we’re in a place where I can just say I’m a model.
“I think it’s important for young women to see a range of different body types and sizes when they look at the fashion industry or magazines and in the media. I feel like I grew up only seeing one body type represented, but I think for the next generation that’s going to be different.”
For more exclusive interviews, pick up this week’s issue of Who Magazine.
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