In The Event That...

Baby Got Back — and She Knows How to Use It

by Ashlea Halpern

Stilettos & CurvesFashion Show

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Sun., June 10, 6:30 p.m., $20-$30, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 1101 Arch St., 443-429-4100, www.fullfigureddiva.com

The oh-so-progressive contestants on Bravo TV's Project Runway revealed just how backward their thinking was last season when host Heidi Klum asked them to design an outfit for "real women." Specifically, their mothers. Thrown for a loop, the fashionistas whined and bitched and threw their scissors in the air. Not only were the moms not a size two, they had floppy boobs, big hips and all sorts of other womanly "problems."

The runway results? A lot of breezy chiffon potato sacks.

Natasha Bryson says enough is enough. The executive director of the Full-Figured Diva Academy (FFDA), a "sisterhood" that specializes in wardrobe styling, event planning and esteem-building workshops, wants the shapely lasses of Philly to know there's more to plus-size fashion than muumuus and caftans. "Women don't have to wear these dresses that have no shape," she says. "You can wear the same things everyone else does. You just have to know how to put them together."

FFDA's Stilettos & Curves Fashion Show aims to teach ladies the importance of a good belt or a sexy corset, as well as fashion's most important accessory: confidence. Bryson promises there'll be no tent dresses on her catwalk � "only really sexy, trendy outfits, paired with some of the greatest 3- and 4-inch pumps you've ever seen."

And while she likes the plus-size threads coming off celeb lines like Queen Latifah's Curvation, Bryson says more designers need to step up to the plate: "The market is huge. ... I want to see someone make a beautiful, elegant gown that doesn't look like a box. That's not too much to ask."