The plus side of fashion
Wearing clothes that express your personality can make you feel powerful, writes Britt Mann.
‘‘When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.’’ The famous quote from British writer Caitlin Moran is a feeling most Kiwi women can relate to.
And if your body doesn’t tend to fit clothes manufactured by mainstream brands, well, that feeling can become all too familiar. We talk to experts in New Zealand’s plus-size fashion industry about the increasing number of clothing options in larger sizes.
The designer
Sarah-Jane Duff is an Auckland-based fashion designer whose label Lost and Led Astray (LaLA) offers garments in sizes 14-24. Sarah-Jane Duff never dreamed of being a plus-size fashion designer, even though making clothes for her fat body was what had sparked her interest in fashion in the first place.
The designer at the helm of Lost and Led Astray, a high-end ‘‘fat’shion" label on Auckland’s K Rd, cut her teeth at The Carpenter’s Daughter, another homegrown plus-size label. Founder Caroline Marr saw Duff’s creations on the runway at New Zealand Fashion Week’s AUT Rookieshow, and hired her as a production assistant.
At fashion school, Duff and her classmates were designing garments to a sample size of 10. It didn’t much register she wouldn’t be able to wear them. "I was just conditioned to think that fashion was for a certain physique,’’ Duff says. ‘‘Designing for my fat body didn’t come into it.’’
Being offered her first fashion design job partially because of her body was somewhat confronting, she says. But Duff rose through the ranks and was made The Carpenter’s Daughter’s head of design. And she started thinking about fashion for bodies like hers.
"Growing up, I had this idea of, ‘When I’m skinny, I’ll be happy’, or, ‘If I’m skinny, I’ll fit in’, or, ‘If I’m skinny, I’ll find my place’,’’ she says.
‘‘[At The Carpenter’s Daughter] I saw how I could be part of a change and that actually, this is my place and this is what I’m meant to do.’’
After four years, Duff left the company to go travelling. When she returned to New Zealand, she worked as a plus-size fashion buyer at Farmers, before launching her LaLA label in 2014.
Today, she is her own sample size: an 18-20. While she avoids high necklines, Duff otherwise disregards the ‘‘rules’’ for dressing bigger bodies.
‘‘I tend to find the most stylish people are the most confident people,’’ she says.
‘‘They might be wearing something that’s on the ‘don’t wear’ list but actually they just look so incredible with their confidence in their outfit that they pull it off.’’
For Duff, fashion is about diversity. She is scathing of the tired trope that the plus-size industry is somehow ‘‘promoting obesity’’.
‘‘I’m just supporting women to have a life, be a part of life,’’ she says.
‘‘If anything, [plus-size fashion] is supporting them to have a healthier life, where they feel like they can face the world.’’
She tells the story of a friend’s mother who, until she started buying LaLA pieces, had never been complimented on her outfits.
The woman recently went to the tennis with a similarly sized friend. They argued over who would wear which LaLA garment – a first for the woman who hadn’t previously paid much attention to her clothes.
‘‘As much as it sucks you had a little squabble with your friend,’’ Duff told her, ‘‘I love the fact you got the opportunity to have that squabble.’’
The retailer Jenny Smith and Geoff Wylde are co-directors of Zebrano, a boutique selling designer fashion for sizes 14 and above. Zebrano has stores in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Lower Hutt and Christchurch, and online.
Type ‘‘plus-size fashion in New Zealand’’ into Google and Zebrano’s website is among the first results. But click into the site itself, and the phrase ‘‘plus-size’’ is nowhere to be found.
‘‘We’ve always tried to normalise what we do,’’ Zebrano co-founder Geoff Wylde explains.
‘‘We sell fashion. It just happens to be sized 14 and above.’’
Wylde’s partner Jenny Smith was inspired to open a plus-size fashion retail business when she found herself working in a women’s clothing shop in Karori, Wellington, in the late 80s. The interior designer, whose mother and sister were ‘‘big’’ women, was ‘‘fairly horrified’’ by the clothing options available for their demographic. She and Wylde, an architect, saw an opportunity to better serve the market. Twenty years after Zebrano was incorporated, it is New Zealand’s largest retailer of designer plussize clothing.
The company’s very name signified its progressive approach to plus-size fashion. At the time Zebrano was founded, other plussize boutiques had off-putting monikers such as ‘‘The Big Bird’’ and ‘‘Extra Elegance.’’
‘‘We just thought they were revolting,’’ Smith says.
Zebrano – a type of striped African hardwood – was among
the words plucked from a random magazine Wylde asked Smith to choose from. The letter ‘‘Z’’ reminded her of a favourite Kiwi designer, Zambesi. And, so, Zebrano was born.
Zebrano’s collections are selected by the directors in consultation with its store managers.
When perusing potential stock, they consider a garment’s internal design lines and how they’ll work on a plus-size body. They also take into account a design’s vertical or angled components, its cut across the hips and, for example, whether it has features around the shoulders.
Smith and Wylde have witnessed dramatic change in offerings from suppliers over their more than two decades in the industry, from the garish floral garments of the late 80s, to favourite Kiwi brands such as Trelise Cooper and Maaike offering larger sizes.
‘‘Many brands are entering the market starting at a size 8 and going to an 18,’’ Smith says.
‘‘Ten years ago, that would have been unheard of.’’
Smith says Zebrano’s customers still don’t have the same range of clothing options as women sized 8-14. Patterning is one reason brands might be reluctant to increase their size range: most clothing is produced off-shore using algorithms to generate a garment’s proportions, a system which can go awry when sizes increase.
‘‘Just because they can put the numbers into the computer grading system, it doesn’t necessarily mean it comes out as a good, workable garment,’’ Wylde says.
‘‘If the arm holes are too small, or there’s not enough fabric in the back, it’s not going to work for us.’’
Stigma, too, is another reason. ‘‘We’ve had suppliers say that a brand which goes up to a 14 is interested in going higher, but they’d have to change the name of the brand because they’d lose customers who don’t want to be associated with those bigger sizes,’’ Smith says.
‘‘I think it’s less and less so the case,’’ she adds. ‘‘There’s a huge degree of normalisation occurring.’’
The idea this normalisation is somehow unhealthy comes from a lack of understanding, Smith says.
‘‘Plenty of our customers are far more active at the gym than someone who may wear a size 10 or 12. Health is not just maintaining a slimmer physique. You can be extremely healthy and be a bigger size.’’
The blogger Meagan Kerr is an Aucklandbased fashion writer, blogger and social media influencer. Her blog, This Is Meagan Kerr, has about 60,000 readers.
Meagan Kerr never planned to be a blogger. She was studying fashion photography when she read a post she disagreed with on the now-defunct website NZ Girl. Kerr can’t remember the subject of the post, but she can remember the response from the site’s administrators after she emailed them to complain.
‘‘They said, ‘Do you think you can you do better?’ I said, ‘Yes.’’’
A slew of bylines and a few awards later, Kerr started her own blog – This is Meagan Kerr – writing about ‘‘straight size’’ fashion.
‘‘At some point I was like, ‘Well, I’m writing about straight size fashion for women but where am I writing about things for people like me?’’
Inspired by overseas plus-size fashion blogs showcasing international brands, Kerr started to explore clothing options available for plus-size Kiwi women. Almost six years later, the options have increased exponentially, she says, largely thanks to the internet.
The Warehouse has been particularly proactive in offering its plus-size customers more choice, Kerr says. It has a dedicated plus-size label, Kate Madison, whose sizes range from 18-28, as well as mainstream brands such as Maya which offers sizes up to an XXL. Its activewear range, Active Intent, has increased its sizes to a 6XL.
Kerr lists Australian brand 17 Sundays and American brand Torrid, as well as ASOS and Duff’s LaLA as other favourite labels. She’s often modelling the brands’ clothing on her blog.
A common ploy from plus-size brands is to display their clothes on mannequins, or on models who are the smallest size in their range.
‘‘If I look at a size 12 [model], I have no idea how that garment is going to fit on me,’’ Kerr explains.
‘‘This way, people can see what the clothes look like on a person who’s possibly a similar size and shape to them.’’
Kerr’s annual survey of her readers yields perhaps surprising results: most claim to spend little on clothing. Notwithstanding lack of disposable income, Kerr attributes the reluctance to spend money particularly on designer garments to the prevailing sentiment that being fat is temporary.
She is writing for readers in the present, however. ‘‘I don’t see why people feel like they should have to wear leggings and a shapeless tunic until they get to look like a supermodel. Which, basically, is never going to happen.’’
For Kerr, clothes are a way to creatively express herself. "If you only have a limited amount of stuff to choose from, and it’s all like, long tunics with butterflies on them, then that’s not my personality,’’ she explains.
‘‘I know that when I’m wearing clothes that express my personality, that makes me feel empowered. Like, ‘Yes, I can take on the world.’’’
While there’s a slow but sure mainstreaming of larger clothing sizes, Kerr says it only takes a glance at the comments on a story like this one to remind her of ‘‘how much the general public hate fat people’’.
‘‘We had drilled into us since we were young that fat bodies are bad, thin bodies are better,’’ she says.
‘‘The diet industry is worth billions of dollars. And the diet industry is essentially made up of diets that are made to fail, because if you succeed on these diets, you’re not going to be a repeat customer.’’
‘‘Making women feel bad about themselves makes money.’’
Kerr, too, dismisses the idea that influencers like her somehow ‘‘promote obesity’’.
‘‘No, we’re really just telling fat women where they can find clothes to fit their body,’’ she says.
‘‘Yes, there are people who are fat and unhealthy. There are also people who are thin and unhealthy.’’
Regardless, Kerr says: ‘‘You still deserve to find clothes that fit your body.’’
‘‘Yes, there are people who are fat and unhealthy. There are also people who are thin and unhealthy.’’
Meagan Kerr