Huge market for plus-size fashion online

SO, have you heard of the #pehamelimpah statement by one Zaihani Mohamad Zain (#zaihanimzain) on Twitter?

I’ve never heard of her but it turns out that she’s the quite nasty person who styled horribly on Akademi Fantasia.

Anyway, contrary to what she thinks, some of us love our #thunderthighs and we are extremely fashionable people.

While the fashion industry may just be waking up to it, we’ve been pushing the fashion lines long enough for brands to recognise that we exist.

In a media interview, Zaihani said that brands don’t design for fat people. She’s not that wrong actually.

When I was younger, I could never find shirts that fit my bosom. The shirts just would not button up. Also, I love wearing long dresses but they were always way too short for me.

Then I found @asos #asos and started buying clothes from the United States. I had to cut off the hem of the dresses because they were too long.

We plus-size people literally fuelled the e-commerce market before most people even started talking about it. In 2014, Asos Curve saw a 132 % increase in sales. And let me point out that most #plussize fashion are more expensive than average-size clothes.

So if you as a brand have decided not to cater to this market, you are losing out on sales and investors. What use are your designs if no one buys them? If you only want to dress size-zero people, I’m sorry but there are way too few of them out there for you to run a profitable business.

Bloggers and Instagrammers have been pushing the growth of #plussize fashion. Fortyfive percent of female shoppers buy their plussize fashion online in various currencies.

Local SMEs like @adeviclothing who are plus-size women themselves are providing quality fashionable clothing in Malaysia and Singapore.

Marks and Spencer, H&M, and Nichii are brands that sell plus-size clothing in Malaysia. Indian brands like Pantaloons, Maxx Fashion, Lifestyle and Shoppers Stop also have some good selection of plus-size clothing. However, they still have more room for improvement.

Designers like Christian Siriano are filling in the gaps and making clothes for the plus-size industry. Artists like Rebel Wilson, Melissa McCarthy and Danielle Brooks have started their own line as well. Reese Witherspoon, Nike, Eva Mendez, Lane Bryant, JCPenney, Target and New York & Company have now joined in to launch plus-size clothing lines.

And this is all because so many plus-size SME boutiques run by plus-size women online have taken over the fashion reins to show that if you don’t sell to us, we will just have to come up with and sell our own fashion range.

Has anyone noticed that there are not many Malaysian names on this list? That’s because Malaysian designers still use mostly white women and one size in all their fashion lines.

And don’t even get me started on those who call sizes up to 16 plus-size.

People like Zaihani can remain lost and lose the business opportunity of targeting us. And mind you, Indian women like me have money to spend. Our silk saree can go up to RM10,000 or more, and they are not those synthetic fake ones which Malaysian designers use for their baju kurung. We’re talking about golddrenched silk thread, pure silk Kanchipuram sarees.

So it’s never been about buying power but a very “size-ist” attitude that fashion only belongs to the thin. Well, the day you start offering a plus-size range, I’ll come and laugh in your face with my #pehamelimpah and all.