When it comes to shopping, the average American man has it made. At 189.8 pounds and a size 44 regular jacket, he can wear Abercrombie & Fitch, American Apparel or Armani. Department stores, mall retailers and designer boutiques all cater to his physique, even when it's saddled with love handles, a sagging chest or a moderate paunch. In menswear, shlubby is accommodated.
But the average American woman, who's 163 pounds (10 pounds more than her Canadian counterpart) and wears size 12 to 14, is treated like an anomaly by apparel brands and retailers, who seem to assume that no one over size 10 follows fashion's capricious trends.
Fashion-forward boutiques 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 only a clutch of plus-size chains. Or they can hit big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, the No. 1 seller of plus-size apparel in the U.S. and Canada – 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 items.
Americans are getting larger, and 62 per cent of females are already categorized as overweight. But the relationship between the fashion industry and fuller-figure women is at a standoff, marked by suspicion, prejudice and low expectations on both sides.
The fear of fat is so ingrained in designers and retailers that even among those who've successfully tapped the market, talking plus-size often feels taboo. The fraught relationship between fashion and plus-size is far from new, but seems particularly confounding in a time when retailers are pulling out all the stops to bring in business. Carrying a range of sizes that includes the average female would seem like a good place to start.
The payoff for sustaining a successful collection is worth the investment, says designer Rachel Pally, perhaps the only designer who sells a contemporary collection in trendy boutiques and a plus-size line – Rachel Pally White Label – in department stores (available at Shop NYLA and George C. in Toronto). Pally's full-figured collection is one of the top-selling vendors for Nordstrom.
"Fashion-forward plus-size women have no options," she says. "They're so thirsty for the product." Designers whose bread and butter rests on their ability to create an aura of cool exclusivity (basically, the bulk of designers seen on the runway, save brands with lifestyle extensions, such as Michael Kors and Calvin Klein) worry that sallying into the market will dilute their brand's mystique and, ultimately, their sales. Prada designer Miuccia Prada may have had these concerns in mind when she stated that she would not sell clothes over a size 10.
While it was heartening to see that Vogue's influential editor, Anna Wintour, styled plus-size British chanteuse Adele for this year's Grammy Awards, we probably won't be seeing the singer on the cover of the magazine any time soon ("Most of the Vogue girls are so thin, tremendously thin, because Miss Anna don't like fat people," Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley told Oprah Winfrey in 2005.)
Whitney Thompson, the only plus-size winner of America's Next Top Model, said: "I just want to see a size 6 model once on a runway."
Perfectly proportioned at 5-foot 10-inches tall who wears a size 10 or 12, depending on the garment, she's the first plus-size model to win Tyra Banks' TV modelling competition, though growing up in Florida, she considered herself to be on the slender side.
"I'm not a plus-size person, I'm a plus-size model," noted the 21-year-old. "On the street, I'm skinny. At castings, I'm a cow."
Credit : http://www.thestar.com/living/article/607021