Substance over style: life outside the fashion industry
For Terri Waters, a dream career became a worst nightmare – and a choice between her love or her life would bring a new beginning to her world
Sitting across from her on a large grey sofa, settled in the middle of her chic Shoreditch apartment, you’d never know the troubles Terri Waters had been through. The sun shines, there’s a smell of cinnamon in the air and there’s a genuine smile on her face at almost all times.
“Let’s get started”, she says, with all the confidence expected of someone about to share their innermost thoughts with the world.
The 25-year-old, East-end native is currently the editor in chief of her own online magazine – one that promotes a healthy body image for teenagers and young women alike. In times when she’s not working, she’s guesting on panels with friends, educating herself further on body politics and spoiling her Yorkshire terrier, Luna.
She’s also a recovering bulimic, and one of the first few people to walk away from a job in fashion due to its lack of inclusivity.
When dreaming of her future, she never pictured this as a child. “I knew from a really young age that I wanted to work in magazines” she says: “I was already reading Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, Glamour – all the women’s titles, and I knew this was what I wanted.” But there came a point where history began repeating itself, and the path of her life changed.
Having been raised happily by two loving parents, and a kind extended family that never commented on her weight or size, it almost comes as a surprise to know how much the values of diet culture seeped their way into her life.
“I guess I constantly felt like I was the fat, ugly, funny one – that was my label, that was how I grew up. I was the person that would get spoken to by guys because they wanted me to introduce them to my best friends.”
She struggled with body image, and highly disorded eating, her whole young adult life.
One event she recalls clearly came in a small shopping centre’s changing rooms. “I was about ten, and I had to get a new school skirt so my mum took me into Peacocks. I went in and tried on all these skirts, and so many didn’t fit or they were too short because I was tall as well as big. And I was in primary school, I was still a child.”
“So, my mum asked if they had any more sizes and the women told her that was all the children’s sizes they carried, and we’d have to shop from the women’s range”, she shares. “I remember thinking, ‘oh my god’, my body was so wrong that I wasn’t even a teenager yet and I had to wear women’s clothes. I remember coming out of there in absolute floods of tears, and turning to my mum and promising her that one day I’d win the lottery and I’d make clothes for everyone, and no one would be left out.”
Like so many women, she just wanted a place where she felt she could belong.
It was passions like this that drove Waters towards a career in fashion, but the unattainable ideals of the industry kept them tempered down. After all, how could engage with fashion on a day-to-day basis and not absorb at least some of beauty standards?
It takes years of unlearning to achieve – something Waters began to find out the hard way.
After graduating from university, she went straight into working for a number of Condé Nast publications – this being the company that prints Vogue – where she stayed for a number of years.
“I might’ve been the fat, funny one, but I’d make damn sure I was the fat, funny, fashionable one.”
It was in a meeting with her full editorial team that Waters finally realised she needed out of the mainstream industry. When it came to discussing the month’s cover star, an unnamed Victoria’s Secret angel, the topic of her retouching via Photoshop came up. “This woman was already a Victoria’s Secret model, and we all know they’re a breed of their own, and only 0.5% of the population look like them. And my team were like, ‘we should make her neck look longer and make her ears a bit smaller, bring her eyes closer together and raise her eyebrows a bit and make her nose a bit thinner’ – they were doing this to one of the most beautiful women in the world, and I just sat there in disbelief.”
After excusing herself from the room, she broke down at her desk. “I wanted to scream, because I was making good money and as much as the hours were making me feel dead inside I felt like I was achieving things. But this was the first time that I really looked at it and thought I was part of the problem. It was a real epiphany for me. If this was what we did to Victoria’s Secret models then what did that mean for the rest of us?”
“I made all these complaints about how we shouldn’t Photoshop bodies and we shouldn’t be making people feel bad about themselves, but I was literally working somewhere where they charged people to look at this poison”, she states. After taking a few months to save and consider her options, she was ready to step away from it all. “I knew the truth behind it, but there were still millions of women and little girls out there who would look at this woman and think she’s the most beautiful thing in the world, but she doesn’t exist. I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
But life, as it always does, had other plans for her. Before she had the chance to make this leap of faith herself, her body gave out.
She’d caught a chest infection a few months prior but left it alone, instead prioritising work deadlines, developing new issues of the magazine and keeping on top of their diaries. In that time, the infection only worsened, and she forced out of her job by a collapsed lung.
What should’ve been her worst nightmare became a blessing in disguise. In the months that followed, Waters had no choice but to rebuild her life – and carve out a new career for herself – from what was left of her life before. This time, though, the only type of fashion she’d engage with would be inclusive.
Almost two years ago, six months into her recovery, she founded The Unedit. An online platform that challenges fashion’s narrow lens of beauty, she fulfils her love for the art of clothing this way.
To her, this venture is about “allowing women to realise their life doesn’t have to stick to the same old script – and their body doesn’t have to be dictated to by a scale.” “It’s incredible really how closely the two are interlinked”, she surmises, “and I call bullshit. It was the freedom and creativity that drew me to fashion, not the messed-up ideals that it pushes on us now.”
For the future of fashion, Waters hopes to see it becoming more inclusive, embracing the ways of body positivity that saved her.
“I think the industry has gotten away with a lot of things they should’ve been called out on, for far too long. I’d like to think that this new generation, the one filled with ‘wokeness’ and social awareness, won’t be afraid to tell brands where they screw up: whether that be by confrontation, or by simply taking their money elsewhere.”
And the rules and practices of the industry?
“It’s a really exciting time, especially for emerging designers who are already surfing this wave and are ready to cater to the market. Some older, more traditional brands may have some trouble adjusting, but I’d like to see them get there.”
“Fashion is heading for a radical moment, and I’m excited to see what that brings.”