ABOUT NATALIE WAKELING

She didn't wait for the industry to change; she changed it herself.
Natalie Wakeling has spent more than 25 years not just working in the Australian fashion industry, but reshaping it. As a model, an agent, a fashion label founder, and now the Publisher of Australia's first luxury plus-size magazine, she has built a career defined not by what the industry offered her, but by what she refused to accept when it didn't.

Natalie grew up in Mudgee, a small town in the NSW central west, and moved to Sydney at 17 to pursue a career in makeup artistry with Napoleon Perdis. It was a chance encounter with a photographer shooting for a new plus-size modelling agency, BGM Models, that changed the course of her life entirely.
What followed was a series of firsts that would leave a permanent mark on the Australian fashion industry.

In 2000, Natalie made history when she appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine in Australia's first-ever editorial shoot featuring a plus-size model. She went on to become one of Australia's first plus-size models to sign international contracts, with FORD Models in New York City and Elite Model Management in Miami, and spent two decades working with every major Australian fashion title, plus-size brand and national retailer.
She was not simply a model; she was a precedent.

In 2006, frustrated by the absence of luxurious, on-trend clothing that actually fitted her body, Natalie launched her own fashion label Embody Women. For nearly two decades, Embody Women provided Australian women sized 8–22 with sustainable, effortless fashion built around real bodies. The label was sold in May 2023.
During those years, Natalie also worked as a model agent and mentor, sitting on the other side of the table, understanding the industry from the inside out, and developing an expertise in what it actually takes to build a lasting career in fashion.

In 2024, Natalie co-founded Curve Rapport alongside Vasiliki Bruzzano, and in doing so, created something that had never existed in this country before: a luxury high fashion magazine dedicated entirely to women size 12 and above.

Curve Rapport is not a consolation prize for women excluded from mainstream fashion media. It is a declaration that curve fashion is high fashion, editorially rigorous, visually extraordinary, and culturally overdue. With each issue, Natalie and her team are changing the perception of what plus-size fashion looks like in Australia, featuring the very best talent across Australia and New Zealand.

She is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief.

Natalie offers boutique model mentoring and personal styling sessions from a gorgeous Sydney studio, sharing 25 years of industry intelligence with aspiring and working models ready to build careers with longevity, intention, and commercial savvy.

She is represented by ICON Management for modelling bookings.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

— Australia's first plus-size model to appear in a Cosmopolitan Magazine editorial (2000)
— International contracts with FORD Models, New York City and Elite Model Management, Miami
— More than 25 appearances in Australian Cosmopolitan Magazine
— Two international front covers for Dutch magazine, Yes!
— Brand Ambassador for Simone Perele
— L'Oréal Paris Trends Parade — Australian Fashion Week
— Australia's first Curvy Catwalk, Melbourne
— Designer collection for Embody Women featured in the inaugural AFW Curve Edit runway show
— ORIAS Award Finalist 2019 — Industry Recognition and Contribution
— Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Curve Rapport — Australia's first luxury plus-size magazine