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April 28, 2024

XXL statement: Beth Ditto is now in fashion

Beth Ditto: The super-size woman in an interview

She is in town for a full 24 hours. Beth Ditto, the American singer with the big voice and the huge curves, gives a guest performance one night in the Berlin "Soho House". Not because she will give a concert with her band Gossip. The reason for her tour through Germany is fashion. As a plus-size star, she had guest appearances on the catwalks of Marc Jacobs and Jean Paul Gaultier. And here it hangs her first own oversized collection strung on two clothes rails from the windows of a suite on the third floor of the hotel. Outside Berliner Torstrasse gray, inside colorful Kussmünder and check patterns that dance on dresses and jumpsuits. And right in the middle is Beth Ditto, 35 years old, just 1.60 meters tall, ball-shaped, full of sex appeal. She wears a black, waist-high tulip skirt, the cream-white hole T-shirt is stuck in the waistband, the feet are dotted pin-up girl socks and platform sandals made of high-gloss paint. It's 10:40 in the morning and Beth Ditto is busy. Very busy. Armed with needle and thread, she stands on the clothes rail and repairs the shoulder seam of an overalls. Her collection is up bethditto.com available.

What an eye-catcher! The "Double Bubble" dress costs about 311 euros, the T-shirt in the same pattern is available for around 59 euros.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Mrs. Ditto, you can actually sew ...

Beth Ditto: Yeah, sure. I can crochet really good, my aunt has taught me. I used to change many of my clothes to my ideas because what they had to buy was not very exciting - and always connected with shame. Man, that's what I always wanted: to be able to come in somewhere and have everything without having to do it myself.

Now we are sitting in front of a collection starting at size 42. How important is the topic of removing pounds?

It's not about trying to make someone look thinner, but about creating a different shape. All my clothes have built-in pockets, so that a cool shape is created and you do not feel at liberty. The back is also specially cut. A girl in Munich put on a dress yesterday and said: Oh, I have a butt!

Do you see yourself with your sexy style as a pioneer of a new self-confidence for curvy women?

I do not know if I'm the leader. There used to be a lot of women in my scene who looked like me. It was a crazy punk-rock feminist-almost-gay movement that was about accepting the female body in all its various forms. Now people are starting to take us seriously. Now we have actually arrived in the mainstream.

Same cut, different pattern: The great summer dresses cost the equivalent of about 311 euros, the embroidered denim jacket around 221 euros.

And how is it when punk in mainstream fashion?

Funnily, I immediately cashed a discharge, because my collection is supposedly too expensive. But I can not do high street fashion where everything costs $ 20. Especially when you do something for people who are bigger, the quality is important. Everything is lined with us, so you do not have to wear underwear under it. And this jumpsuit here is almost seven meters of silk. If that's too expensive for you and you really want to be punk, then you can steal the stuff. That's what I would have done at a certain time in my life.

Looking back at your career and the song "Heavy Cross" from 2009 that started internationally, would you say that you had to fight harder for your success because you are a woman, lesbian and not wearing size 36?

Naturally! People still ask me if I feel like a fetish object or a marginal phenomenon. I say: yes, sometimes. But I've always tried to make it easier for the other girls. In the last decade, there has been an incredible change in the relationship of women to their bodies. Just think of singers like Adele or Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes. I watched the Grammy Awards this year, and there were four fat women - that would have been the case when I was 25 years old. (Beth literally said, "fat women." Beth is allowed to do that.)

What made you so strong that you could simply overturn prevailing ideals of beauty?

I think the fact that I grew up in a house full of children, in poverty, with a really cool mother. You develop empathy and the will to work hard. Besides, I'm from the punk scene. It's about rebel against something together. The principle of sisterhood, we do it together.

Nice picture!

Yes, what would I do without a sisterhood? That's why it makes me so sad to see some comments on my Instagram account, just like the fat girls are common among themselves. It should not go there. Women, do not be so stupid, do not be so narrow-minded, help each other!