Call it what you will, but it's a fact. As a species, we humans are getting bigger. And there's been a lot of press about it over the past few years, mostly pretty negative.
Whilst there’s plenty of emotional and social debate about this issue, the technical job of clothing increasingly large bodies has been a bit underestimated.
As a stylist, my job is to help people feel great about themselves through the way they dress. And I have to admit that styling plus-size women and men does present problems. But perhaps we're focusing on the wrong side of this issue. It’s not as much about size as it is about proportions and the distribution of weight on the body. It can be equally tricky to dress a woman with a UK size 8 petite frame and a 36DD bust. Like the gorgeous but unusually-proportioned Christina Hendricks, above, anyone outside the range of "standard" proportions can find themselves seriously at odds with the mass-produced fashion industry.
The New York Times had a fascinating article on this very point.
Weight gain at the leaner end of the body spectrum does very little to change body proportions and shape – the waist generally stays smaller proportionally to the hips and bust on a woman, for example. But as weight gain increases, it varies greatly from person to person where the weight is laid down. On some people it’s thighs, on others it’s the tummy, on others it’s the chest and shoulders. And this is why so many plus size clothes are shapeless and stretchy, because catering to this diverse range of proportions creates surprisingly expensive technical problems for the folks who make clothes. And that expense has to be met by profits. But it is fair to force plus size consumers to pay more for their clothes? Which takes us straight back to the emotionally and socially heated plus-size debates.
I’d love to hear some opinions on this, particularly from those who are not a size 8 and find it difficult to look and feel good in clothes originally designed for a size 8. It’s about positive solutions. Have you found brands that work for you? Do you make your own clothes? What styles do you aspire to wear?
Or have you completely given up?
Fascinating article Geri - you raise an interesting point! I'm not a size 8, but surely the same applies for gorgeous girls over 5'9" . Anyone above the 'normal' height for women find the same difficulty when buying clothes. Mostly, I find that shops just use the same designs as for average women but just seem to add a few extra inches in arm and leg length. But this is where my point lies: tall people do not have the same proportions as average people(much like women and men who are outside the 'normal' proportions due to weight). Designers carelessly adding a few inches here and there and labelling garments 'tall' is just shocking. Why should I have to pay things which are so poorly thought out. 9 times out of 10 most items I buy in the Tall section make me either look even taller or like a twig in a bin bag. Its the same dilemma time and time again.
ReplyDeleteI think I fit in the category of 'given up'. Over the years as my weight has spiralled up and down I tried to maintain at least 2 sets of clothes - the fat ones and the thin ones. These days, if I'm realistic, I would have to say I will probably never fit into the thin clothes again and they are taking up valuable cupboard space. Yet I can't quite give up the dream of fitting into clothes that aren't shapeless, loud patterned sacks that make me feel 20 years older than I actually am!!
ReplyDeleteThe few upmarket clothing lines that make clothes for women who don't fit the fashion magazine ideal generally have a sameness to them or are so expensive that they are beyond the means of the average woman. As a result, I have lost interest in trying to dress well and tend to get around in shapeless tshirts and jeans from Target.
Thank god for Target or I probably would be nude!!!
Really appreciate your insights, ladies! It seems, regardless of shape or size, if we don't fit the normal standard size (whatever the hell that is!) it's a question of searching endlessly until we find options that work for us. It's amazing to me that mass-produced fashion is so successful, given the incredible range of sizes and shapes it has to cater to.
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