Trading Excess for Intimacy

PARIS — Lara Stone, the gaptoothed Dutch-English model often compared to Brigitte Bardot who was at the top of models.com’s Top 50 models in the world list from 2010 to 2012, has done many things in fashion.

She has been on the covers of Vogue, had a Calvin Klein exclusive and married a celebrity (the British comedian David Walliams; they divorced in 2015). But even during her heyday she rarely walked the couture runways.

Her body was not considered, said Pierpaolo Piccioli, the creative director of Valentino, a “couture body.” Her bust was too big; her walk, dubbed “the Lara lurch,” too weird.

But that’s exactly why Mr. Piccioli wanted Ms. Stone, now 38, in his show this week. Also Kristen McMenamy, 57; Marie-Sophie Wilson, 73, and an entire assortment of models ranging in dress size from zero to 10, in height from average to towering, and with various permutations of breasts and butts and thighs and stomachs that would otherwise, perhaps, have disqualified them from the job. (There were men, too, of a variety of ages, if not sizes.)

The point being, said Mr. Piccioli, to refute the idea that there is one single ideal, one definition of beauty — he called it “a canon of beauty” in a preview — other than a person who feels good about themselves as they actually are.