Last week, the Talent Management bloggers shocked you all when we revealed that Welsh milliner Robyn Coles’ LFW debut saw her controversially chose naked models, one of which was pregnant, to showcase her hat collection down the catwalk.

Ever since, we’ve been wondering, just why and how did she come to cast such a diverse choice of models for her show?

Luckily for all you who are as curious as Talent Management, Fashionista just interviewed the designer, asking her about the motive behind what turned out to be a whole lot of flesh on show.

“It’s a basic, honest publicity scam!” admitted Coles. “As a new designer I want to get people to see my work and now. I hope that people who look at the show like the light-hearted choice of nudity, appreciate the different forms of the human body and above all – like my work.

“It was about getting as many people there as possible. Furthermore I like to think that it highlights the ease of accessories in that you don’t have to be a certain shape or size to wear a hat. It is always good to see diversity on the catwalk, and accessories are the best way to do that.”

Of course, being a pro-diversity modelling agency, we love this refreshingly open answer. We are always fans of casting models outside of the classic ‘straight’ look, and Coles’ choices, which included heavily pregnant former Miss Wales, Sophia Cahill and tattooed actor and comedian Jeff Leach, couldn’t have been further away from models typically seen at Fashion Week.

But just how did the designer come to choose such body-confident and diverse models, especially one that’s pregnant?

“Sophia is a friend of mine and she has done a lot of pageantry and glamour modelling so is confident with her body, I also thought it was great bonus that she was pregnant as you never really see that on the catwalk,” she explained.

“Jeff was another friend who is an all round fan of nudity, I knew that he would want to be involved.”

Coles went on to explain why she chose her other models; a grey-haired lady and a burlesque dancer: “We cast some life drawing models such as Alex, the lady with the lovely long grey hair. She is Italian and so she has a wonderful air of confidence about her body. Then we had Katie who is a burlesque dancer going by the name of Lady Cave. Again as she is a performer she is so confident about her body and they all were wonderful, when they came off stage they were so excited they all just wanted to do it again!”

So there you have it, for this particular designer, models with great body-confidence and diversity were the prefect choice to get noticed, and her ploy certainly worked!