The average fashion model is a size 0, or maybe even a size 2. The average American woman? She wears a 14.

Ceslie Armstrong ’85 is on a mission to bring fashion to ladies that don’t look like Kate Moss with Grace magazine, a fashion, beauty and lifestyle publication geared to plus-size women. Only models size 12 and up grace its pages.

“Women have a real disconnect when they look through fashion magazines,” said Armstrong, who co-founded Grace this year and serves as editor-in-chief. “People say I’ll never be able to afford that, and I’ll never be able to look like that.”

Grace enters the market at just the right time. Plus-size fashion is the fastest growing segment in the retail industry, and Armstrong says it will be equally fast in the magazine industry.

When the premiere issue of Grace, one of only a few major magazines for the plus-size market, hit the stands May 14, its 300,000 copies quickly sold out everywhere. And when Armstrong saw her creation on a Manhattan newsstand, she cried tears of joy.

“There it was front and center right next to Vogue, Cosmo and Glamour,” she said. “There was a size 14 woman on a cover of a magazine that looked just as gorgeous, if not more, than the women on the other magazine covers because she looked happy, healthy and fit.”

With a father in the newspaper business and a mother who was a model, Armstrong was born to write and to love fashion. She has been a guest host and an entertainment commentator on television shows such as Access Hollywood, Extra and Entertainment Tonight.

“You can be happy, healthy and fit in the skin you’re in — no matter what color that skin is,” she said. “Women’s magazines are meant to be part fantasy, part entertainment and aspirational, but we feel Grace is both aspirational and inspirational.”