'Tactical move' behind Brittney Saunders' viral TikTok calling out Aussie brands for failing curvy women
By Maddison Leach|
When Brittney Saunders uploaded an off-the-cuff TikTok calling out Aussie brands for excluding bigger bodies, she didn't expect to rack up 2.3 million views in a few days.
The Newcastle influencer shot the 58-second clip after realising there was hardly any representation for curvy or plus-size women in the Westfield where her newest Fayt The Label store is located.
As a self-described "curvy girl", Saunders knows exactly how hard it can be to feel included and find styles that suit her figure in mainstream stores.
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"I'm representing that middle size where sometimes you will fit into a size 12 or 14 and sometimes it won't even go past your knees," she says.
The 16,000 comments on her viral TikTok proves it's a common experience among Australian women who have lost faith in big-name brands that only cater to small sizes.
Saunders made subtle nods to some of those brands in her video, admitting that it was a "tactical move" because she knows how frustrated other women are.
"TikTok is the most savage platform there isกญ it's pretty common to see people calling out brands that are very obviously not being inclusive," she explains.
"I knew what I was doing when I was throwing those cheeky comments in there."
Curvy and plus-size women have taken to social media in droves in recent years to criticise brands that refuse to stock sizes over 16 or embrace body positivity.
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Many mainstream brands that offer bigger sizes sell them online, effectively excluding plus-size women from shopping in stores. Other labels exclude plus-size or curve models from their marketing.
"If you're a brand that is going to a size 20, but you are only ever showing a size six on your Instagram and your website, it's not going to translate," Saunders says.
It's why she was so adamant about including a whole range of sizes and body types in Fayt The Label's styles, marketing, social media, store mannequins and staff.
But not everyone is on board with the brand's body positive ethos.?
Cruel hate comments are common on videos showing anyone bigger than a size 10 modelling the clothes on the brand's TikTok or Instagram accounts.
"If anyone ever does comment something sad or nasty towards myself or any of our models, I just pity that person," Saunders says, adding that she always deletes the comments.
She's been the target of online trolls before and though she has a thick skin these days, there was a time when their comments would leave her in tears.
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Saunders got her start on YouTube in 2011, but was targeted by bullies at her high school and was too scared to post photos of her body online even as her account gained traction.
"I would go home crying and my mum would say, 'that's it, you're deleting the videos'. But I never gave up," she says.
"In my early YouTube days I definitely was self-conscious of my bodyกญ I remember always comparing myself to all the other influencers at the time who were a slim size six."?
In the years since, Saunders has built a following on her message of self-love but society still has a lot of catching up to do in the body positivity space and Fayt The Label is part of that.
"I would never say that we are completely inclusive because inclusivity goes further than just sizing. It goes in all different directions," she says.
"What I've learned over the years in business is I can only do as best as I possibly can."
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Even so, the fashion label's success since it launched in 2017 is a testament to Saunders' determination and "cowboy, go-getter attitude".
Though she rose to fame as a YouTube creator and influencer, she always knew that line of work wasn't sustainable long-term and dreamed of starting her own business.
It started small with a little beauty business offering $15 spray tans around Newcastle, where she's based. Then Saunders invested her YouTube earnings into building something bigger.
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"Throughout my early twenties, I learned how to be good with money. I was saving, I wasn't splurging and buying designer bags or anything like that," Saunders says.
"I'm very glad I never got into that whole world that I know a lot of influencers can get sucked into, because all of a sudden you're earning all this money and you're like, 'I'm just going to spend it on fancy things to post on the internet'."
By putting all the cash from her brand deals into savings, Saunders was able to create and self-fund Fayt The Label at just 24-years-old, though it wasn't easy.
At first she hid her work on the brand from social media, embarrassed about running it from her garage. People also underestimated her.?
"As a young woman in business, you will have people not take you seriously," she says. "This was before influencer brands became a thingกญ I figured out how to do it all myself."
There were plenty of mistakes along the way, including a few financial blunders that cost Sauders a lot of money, but with time and dedication she made it work.
Now she runs three e-commerce businesses, has opened two Fayt The Label stores and a coffee shop and creative space in her local Newcastle.
Even with all that under her belt, Saunders still gets a kick out of the mixed reactions she gets as a young woman in business.
"I'm going to meetings with men who might be double my age and I can just see the look in their face like, 'who is this young girl and what is she doing?'" she laughs.
"I often wonder if they think, 'does she have mummy and daddy who's paying for all of this and helping her out?'"
That couldn't be further from the truth; in fact, Saunders actually pays her mum as a full-time employee of the brand.
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Despite her incredible success, the 30-year-old warns other young Australians not to be tricked into thinking that running a business is easy because of what they see online.
TikTok and Instagram are full of business owners who only share their highlights, but Saunders says it's important to be transparent about starting a brand from the ground up.
"Owning a business is the hardest thing you'll ever do. You'll work more than you've ever worked in your whole life," she says.?
"You will spend more money than you ever have spent in your whole life, but if you're doing it for the right reasons, you will truly feel like you're never working a day in your life."
After all, if she taught herself how to do it at 24 with a little help from Google, anyone can.?
Just make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, not because "you saw someone on Instagram or TikTok make it look easy".
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