This past year has been a sort of coming out for plus-sized models if you consider the likes of a Crystal Renn who appears in both fashion magazines and on the catwalk or Lizzy Miller who appeared nude in Glamour and actually dared to show her belly flesh to the world. Despite the increase in publicity and popularity of plus-sized models, there still doesn’t seem to be a significant increase in the amount of plus-sized clothing available to women in proportion to women and their sizes.
A recent NYT article speculated that part of the problem may stem from the difficulties in modifying an existing clothing line to fit larger sizes because the proportions of the bodies change as well. Additionally, there is a greater range of variation between women with larger figures than those who wear a size two for example; some may be more pear-shaped while others might have a more ample bosom. Also interesting is the fact that stretchy fabrics are more difficult to cut and sew than their non-stretchy counterparts.
The retail giant Lane Bryant started out selling maternity clothes and then began looking for ways to serve women with “stouter figures”- after looking through thousands of insurance records with measurements of women in the early 20’s, Lane Bryant was able to determine that there were three types of “stout women”: “all-over stout,” “flat-busted stout” and “full-busted stout.”
Earlier this year, ABC received complaints when Lane Bryant aired a commercial starring a plus-sized woman in a lingerie advertisement during ABC’s family hour. The complaint was based primarily on the fact that the Lane Bryant model’s breasts were larger.
Currently, other retailers and clothing lines are marketing to plus-sizes as well. Surprisingly, the statistics seem to indicate that more clothing is sold in the larger sizes of the plus-sized industry at the moment. The reason for this may be that someone who has just become a sized 14 may still believe they will lose the weight and return to their former size of an eight or a ten. The plus-sized brand “Torrid” and the plus-sized arm of “Forever 21” are also heavily targeting the plus-sized market.
As many stores do, Neimann Marcus sells plus-sized clothing; the problem with their advertising and marketing lies in the fact that they use their standard models (who must be sized 2-6) as opposed to using any plus-sized models.