EMBRACING ‘MY SIZE’
Collection breaks boundaries
Fashion should make you feel good — no matter your dress size or physical shape.
It’s an idea brands and designers have finally begun to embrace on a broader scale in recent seasons, introducing more size-inclusive collections beyond the “standard” set of numbers.
But, according to Roxy Earle, we’ve still got a long way to go.
“It’s one thing to put a girl who is a size 14 on the cover of a magazine now, but five years ago, that was unheard of. They were scared, they were fearful that they wouldn’t sell a magazine or beauty product. That women wouldn’t buy the clothes. There were all these misconceptions about women of a certain size,” the Toronto-based reality TV personality and lifestyle expert says. “I think it has taken so long because we have a lot to unravel.
“We’re talking about a lot of years of being told how we should look and what beauty is and what the definition of beautiful is.”
The Real Housewives of Toronto star points to “fashion, media and the world” as the perpetuators of the falsified idea that woman with curves don’t want to show them off.
“We’ve been told that we need to ‘flatter our figures’ and ‘conceal our tummies,’” Earle — who eschews the term “plus-size” in favour of a moniker she calls “My Size,” which she encourages other women to embrace on social media with the hashtag #MySizeRox — says with open anger. “Who says a woman who is a size 22 doesn’t want to show off her body? Who says that a woman who is a size 16 doesn’t want her hips to be hugged? “Who told us that?” Needless to say, she’s not buying it.
“I want clothes that celebrate my gorgeous body,” she says.
But, as a curvy woman, Earle was no stranger to the size and style biases facing women who aren’t within the size zero to 12 range. Women shopping for 12-plus options are often met with oversized, tent-like garments that rarely mirror the styles on offer to other shoppers.
It was a sartorial reality Earle had grown tired of facing.
“I wasn’t able to express my style in the way that I wanted to — I literally did not have the clothes,” she says of the frustration she felt.
And it’s a problem she says affects every woman in the category — regardless of budget.
“I had the resources to be able to buy all the clothes that I wanted to buy. And I couldn’t buy anything,” she says. “Because they didn’t exist. Not in designer clothes, nondesigner clothes and not in midmarket clothes.
“There weren’t any clothes that were worthy of making the statement that I wanted to make in this world. I want to make an entrance when I walk into a room and have people says, ‘Wow!’ But I couldn’t do that.”
So, rather than face yet another fashion season filled with disappointment, she set out to make clothes that celebrate women — of all shapes and sizes.
“I made sure that the styles that I chose would work for women in a wide range of sizes,” Earle says of her Roxy Earle x Le Château collection, the first of three sizeinclusive collections she’s created with the Montreal-based brand to launch this year.
Earle’s collection runs in sizes of 0-22W and includes more than 40 clothing designs such as jumpsuits, dresses and tops, as well as 18 accessories styles encompassing footwear, handbags and more.
Upon first seeing the line — which plays with colour and print including snakeskin and florals — it immediately becomes apparent that this isn’t a traditional “plus-size” range.
“It was something that was incredibly important to me when I was designing this collection,” Earle remarks when asked about the styles. “There are so many clothes, especially for the plus-12 market, that are designed for the lowest common denominator of women. It’s like, if I make a tent, then every girl will fit it.
“For me, fit has nothing to do with it. It’s about fitting into it. It’s about celebrating the body and its curves and uniqueness.”
Earle and the Le Château design team brought in Dr. Marie-Ève Faust, who holds a PhD in sizing and is the director at L’École supérieure de mode de l’ESG UQAM in Montreal, to consult on the line — and how to make it work for a broader range of body shapes.
“I was aware that I was doing something that hadn’t be done before when it comes to sizing. We hadn’t seen that in larger sizes,” Earle says of the expert opinion. “It was important to me that the size wasn’t going to decide the style. This is the style first. This is how I want to dress, and these are the clothes I could never find for myself.”
Earle hopes the styles accomplish her overarching mission of making women feel stunning — and in style.
“My mission is to make women feel beautiful being themselves. And to stop spending so much of their time and energy obsessing over the woman they think they have to be to be happy,” she says of the designs. “And to just be happy with who they are.
But the collection isn’t just about fashion. For Earle, having a Canadian connection for her sizeinclusive range was a key factor to moving forward with the project in the first place.
“It was really, really important to me,” she says of creating this line with a homegrown brand like Le Château. “I’m a businesswoman and a proud Canadian. I really honour the fact this company was created by a Canadian family.”
She also hopes the calculated risk the business partnership has bet upon — providing a collection that spans size 0-22W using all the same styles — prompts other brands to follow suit.
“I hope that we can be the catalyst, the case study for the change,” she says. “People are waiting to see if it’s a success and if people buy the clothes. And then they’ll copy us ... I’d be thrilled if they copy us.”
So far, it’s looking like a pretty safe bet.
Earle says the pre-sale was so strong they had to scale back the number of items shipping to stores because the garments had already been spoken for.
“We had to cut 10 stores from the list of stores receiving the clothes because we sold so many clothes already online,” she says.