Hi friend,
I was standing in the aisle between cubicles when I turned my back, gritted my teeth and said, rather shortly, āNo, really, you can check the tag on my pants if you donāt believe me.ā
Iād made a casual comment about not being able to find black slacks that I liked, and a well-meaning but oblivious co-worker had just suggested that I shop at Nordstrom Rack. When I responded gently that Nordstrom didnāt really carry my 26/28 clothing size and probably wasnāt worth the time to visit, sheād insisted that I couldnāt possibly wear a 26/28 in the first place.
Reader, she declined the offer to check in my pants.
Leaving the issue of our cultural inability to accept that anyone could be that fat aside:
Sixty-seven percent of American women wear plus sizes, but only 16% of new clothing is made for them. Whatās behind this mismatch? How did we get here?
Some depressing statistics (all sourced from this Racked article):
š The retail analytics firm Edited looked at 25 of the largest multi-brand retailers (think Shopbop, Macyās, Net-a-Porter, etc.), which together carry more than 15,500 brands, and found that just 2.3 percent of their womenās apparel assortment is plus-size.
š Of 300 or so brands that showed at New York Fashion Week, only 32 offer up to at least a size 16, and 14 produce sizes 22 or above. Plus size makes up just 0.1% of the luxury market.
š For online retailers that carry both plus and straight sizes, the figures are only somewhat better: Overall, 16 percent of their assortment is plus.
When you do not live in a big body, it is almost impossible to understand the scope of the problem. Hereās a helpful graph: