In the summer of 2003, I was working as an assistant resident manager at my alma mater (I’d looked for jobs in the fashion industry, of course, but at the time even my most talented classmates had trouble getting interviews due to the economy). On the way back from a lunch break, I bounded through the lobby of the dorm building where I lived, wearing a cheerful cherry-print dress of my own design.
A woman from the Admissions office, who was escorting an applicant, stopped me and asked “Why do you not have your own line?”
“I don’t have any financial backing or startup capital,” I explained, “but someday I’ll do it.”
Nearly six years later, I’m still hoping to someday launch my own line.
Believe it or not, I didn’t decide to go into fashion because it’s one of the family specialties (my extended family actually has more teachers than style mavens). I did so out of sheer frustration.
In this entry, I mentioned my own curvaceous figure. As it was a bit beyond the main subject of the entry, I didn’t go into detail about how difficult it is to shop for clothes when you’re built like I am.
I’m five feet, six inches tall (without the heels). My measurements are 40-30-38, and I wear a 36DD bra. With a little persistence, I can usually find skirts and pants that fit, but I can’t buy pants on short notice because they’re ALWAYS four to eight inches too long (I have stunted shins), requiring me to hem them (what happened to the days when pants had petite, regular, and tall inseams?). I can’t wear most jumpsuits or one-piece swimsuits because of my freakishly long torso (I had to extend my tailored jacket pattern by a whopping FOUR inches at the waist so the finished jacket would actually reach my hips – until my professor saw the mockup on me, she was convinced I’d made it way too long). Tight waists are a no-no (I also have extra ribs). It’s damn near impossible to find tops that fit my ample chest without being horribly skanky or unforgivably frumpy – and if I can, I’m VERY lucky if they are long enough to cover my midriff. Dresses, especially short ones, are even harder to find (especially since I prefer dresses that can also hide the ugly discolored scar on my left knee). Regular misses’ sizes often don’t fit at all, yet true plus-size apparel is MUCH too big on me (everywhere except my chest, anyway).
In short, trying to dress myself off-the-rack is a royal pain in the arse.
If you have ever been moved to tears by the hell of trying on bathing suits while a few pounds overweight, imagine feeling that way EVERY time you are in a fitting room. After one particularly traumatic shopping experience (in which only ONE item in an entire shopping mall came ANYWHERE close to fitting – and it looked AWFUL on me), I added classes in sewing and patternmaking to my college course schedule. If the local stores weren’t willing to carry things I could actually wear, I could still dress well (and send a very clear “screw you” message) by making my own clothes.
After my sewing teacher was completely floored by my insanely complicated, handmade Sally costume (including a handmade yarn wig), I realized I was actually pretty good at it, and a year later I was majoring in Fashion Design at another school, with hopes of one day bringing high style to the curvy masses.
Nowadays, I’m bringing stylish vegan shoes, bags, and other apparel to veggie-friendly Southern California, but there is a much more neglected market out there. One that grows in number by the day, is not going to go away, and is being ignored by snobby, sexist, fat-phobic designers.
I am referring, of course, to women who aren’t rail thin.
I didn’t say “plus size” because one needn’t be a size 14 to be sneered at by anorexic boutique employees and encounter stores that refuse to carry anything above a size 6 (no, I’m not kidding). This is especially true in SoCal.
Recently, the plight of the size 8-and-up woman has been chronicled by the LA Times, primarily by the All The Rage blog. In this entry, blogger Monica Corcoran starts with the ruthless attitude toward non-sylphs prevalent in the LA area. In part:
A friend of mine once walked into Fred Segal and asked for a dress in a size 8 and the slip of a saleswoman smiled sadly and said: “Sorry. We don’t carry a lot of large.” Large? If a size 8 is considered a large here, imagine how a size 14 must feel.
That entry was soon followed by a great article from Emili Vesilind: Fashion’s Invisible Woman. Vesilind points out that the fashion industry is far more forgiving of larger men than of larger women, but goes into far greater detail about the industry’s widespread delusion that women over a size 6, who make up the majority of the American women’s apparel market, either don’t exist or are unworthy of wearing the same fabulous ensembles as their size 2 friends. Here’s a very telling passage:
Fashion-forward boutiques such as Maxfield and Fred Segal rarely stock anything over a size 10, and in designer shops, sizes beyond 6 or 8 are often hidden like contraband in the “back.” Department stores typically offer tiny sections with only 20 or so brands that fit sizes 14 and up — compared with the 900-plus brands they carry in their regular women’s wear departments.
That leaves style-loving full-figured women with a clutch of plus-size chains including Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Avenue and Torrid. Or big-box stores such as Target, Kohl’s and Wal-Mart, the No. 1 seller of plus-size apparel in the country — though most of its selection consists of basic, often matronly items. Beyond this, plus-size clothing is largely relegated to the Internet, where customers who already have a complicated relationship with clothes are unable to see, touch or try on merchandise.
(As a fashion-loving curvy woman, I have to say: big box stores?! Seriously? I’ve seen the offerings at big box stores – lots of polyester, often-unflattering cuts, and lackluster quality indicative of a likely sweatshop origin. I’d rather go naked than shop at Wal-Mart.)
With more Americans getting bigger and bigger, it makes sense to provide stylish apparel that they can actually wear, instead of jealously gazing at in the pages of a glossy magazine. In fact, that article touched a chord with many LA Times readers. Yet, the industry still doesn’t want to wake up and pay attention.
Those of us who love clothes but have a hard time finding things that fit have money to burn, since we so rarely get to spend it. When we find things that fit and flatter, many of us don’t even look at the price tag before snatching it up (before money became tight for yours truly, I NEVER, EVER cared how much a perfectly-fitting garment cost). Many of us would happily abandon frumpy/dumpy “plus size” stores forever if stylish stores and designer boutiques carried that cute dress in the window in size 16 as well as size 0. Making real-person sizes readily available wouldn’t just be far more kind to curvy women, it could very well give the economy a well-needed boost. Case in point:
I’m a 14 (albeit working on returning to former 10-12 size), willing and able to spend money on fashion, and there’s nothing to buy.
The first national designer/retailer combo brave enough to make and stock real fashion sized for the average American woman is going to make a fortune, and then hopefully the rest will begin to follow.
- Arlene Wszalek, Sherman Oaks (the Shoe Lady’s hometown!)
I’d have launched my own label right after opening the store, were it not for the fact that starting a clothing company is VERY, VERY EXPENSIVE – much more so than opening the store (which certainly was not cheap, either). It’s true that Calvin Klein started with $10,000, but that was in 1967. Today, he’d probably need at least half a million dollars. One brilliant designer I know privately mentioned that she’d saved money for her entire adult life so she could afford to start her own company.
Would anyone out there like to invest in a stylish, curve-friendly, all-vegan startup clothing label? Anyone? I’ll give you clothes and even custom-fit them myself…I promise to use healthy, smiling models in every color of the rainbow for all my ads and shows…I’ll have everything manufactured in America or in fair-trade factories abroad…I’ll even give your fashion-mad niece an internship. I want to help my lushly-figured sisters, but I can’t do it alone.
P.S. Incidentally, there are eco-friendly labels out there that are apparently just as fat-phobic as Chanel, Prada, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received line sheets from green designers who aren’t making anything bigger than a size 8, as if larger women couldn’t possibly be eco-chic! While it can be fiscally sensible to start with a few sizes and add more as a company expands – as some footwear companies have done – green labels are doing no favors for themselves or the market by not starting with a size range more representative of today’s customer – say, sizes 6 to 16 instead of 0 to 10. One would think that all Earth-conscious companies would also be socially conscious.
