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To be fat and Trendy?…

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:48:37 > A puzzling thought

Or is it just bad styling?

I remember whilst watching my favourite music program years ago the glorious appearance of Chaka Khan who was celebrating resurgence in her career with the success of ‘I feel for you’ in the British charts. I had never seen the curvy diva before and waited in anticipation for her introduction and suddenly, there she was – a vision of mammoth hair, thigh boots and engineered corsetry that was just about managing to keep a bosom of such huge dimension from escaping into the audience! But you know – she looked and was fabulous. I saw her again quite recently and she was still proudly sporting an extraordinary concoction of boned frivolousness and everyone loved every minute of it – now why can that not be for all of us women?

The highstreet has begun to offer the larger woman more access to younger fashionable clothing from Evans ‘Seven’ range, New Look’s ‘Inspire’ collection, fun fashion pieces from Dorothy Perkins. For me it is a mixed blessing – yes, it allows young women of every size to go on a shopping trip together and all come home with a bag full of goodies, and yes, if you want a pair of skinny jeans – you can have them but, does it necessarily mean that you look good in them? It’s a bit of a quandary – a woman should be allowed to wear whatever she wants and ‘trendy’ clothing should be available to all – but, can we be assured that the retailer also cares about what we look like? Skinny jeans and glittery boob tubes modelled by girls for a plus-sized range who maybe just about a size 14 will look great but will they look good on girls of size 20? A percentage will – absolutely, on others – maybe not, so where is the balance?

Poor quality, and skimpy cutting has always been the curse of throwaway fashion but is emphasised in larger sizes. Everything is judged by the cut of the cloth and when it’s done frugally to keep the costs down the larger size is the one to suffer. The same goes when a garment is graded up badly – the result is a poorly fitting garment with no regard to proportion. This can also be said for the other way as well – when a plus sized garment over-compensates for the curves of a larger women, resulting in a frumpy shapeless piece of clothing.

It does come down to confidence in the woman herself. Advice is on offer from a lot of retailers – sometimes a little questionable when it’s coming from people who have no idea at all of what it is to be larger in size.

Some time ago I went into a larger, very well known plus-size retailer to find out about their personal shopping service – I was immediately and sternly informed that what they actually have is a personal ‘stylist’ service and was confronted by a young girl who was no bigger than a size 8 ready to tell me how to wear the latest plus-size collections – to be honest I felt insulted. I told her that I was a private personal shopper and wanted to know about the current seasons highlights and was treated to a monotone description of the latest deliveries – on questioning the proportions and sizing she had no answers and worst of all - no interest.

What retailers do not care to take into consideration is that advice on this level is a very sensitive subject, an advisor needs to have a thorough knowledge of the larger figure and the kind of attention it needs. A lot of larger women carry themselves magnificently but a lot more do not as they are battling with self-esteem problems and these are the women who should not be stuck in a pair of skinny jeans just because it’s trendy.

I have to add at this point that the other essential element of this is the buyer – the person responsible for buying these collections - again, my experience is of buyers who either think that they have some kind of remit to solve all problems plus-sized and make a complete shambles of it - or there is the buyer who has been reluctantly assigned to plus-sizes to await their next step-up into designer fashion and so doesn’t have a clue about what they buying and who they’re buying for. This sounds harsh but it can be the only explanation for the badly selected and poorly stocked collections in a lot of stores – I even came across a plus-size buyer that had never been to or had even sought to go to any European trade shows to see what everyone else is doing – amazing!

I’m a fan of Gok Wan and his ‘How to look good naked’ programs, even Trinny and Susannah have a few interesting things to say – even if their styling sense is poor, both have started to bring up points about the female figure that will make women think about what they wear and how they carry themselves and that’s all very good. Together with the Dove ‘Campaign for real women’ that is attempting to deal with confidence in women and young girls which is to be encouraged and should be developed even more.

I think what I am trying to say to retailers and manufacturers is please do not give skinny girls - or boys for that matter the job of solving a big girls needs thinking that they can be fobbed off with poor imitations of current fashion trends rather than developing a selection that highlights the best of what is popular but at the same time takes into consideration how well it is made and how well it is sold.

Us big girls know exactly what we want and it’s your job to listen not the other way around!

UGH