Sizing things up: Universal Standard making fashion more inclusive
The fashion industry’s affinity for small sizes is nothing new.
But Universal Standard is helping to change that with an inclusive line for sizes 00 to 40.
The women’s fashion company recently opened a two-story showroom at 1202 Hawthorne in Montrose that features the brand’s easy, comfortable wardrobe staple pieces, including pencil skirts, tunic dresses, denim and athletic wear, mostly in solid colors that can mix and match. Prices start at $18 for camisoles and run up to $240 for cashmere sweaters. Denim is $90.
“About 67 percent of women in the U.S. are larger than a size 14,” said Universal Standard cofounder and creative director Alexandra Waldman, who wears a size 20. “There’s an aversion to bigger bodies in the fashion world, and a lot of brands feel that adding larger sizes will dilute the cachet of their brand. There isn’t a lot of goodwill.”
Universal Standard has found a welcoming audience in major cities, including New York, Seattle and Houston, which is the brand’s No. 3 market.
Waldman, a former fashion journalist, and friend Polina Veksler, a tech and finance executive, launched the brand with their own money in 2015. Their eight-piece capsule collection of wardrobe basics, which they offered out of Waldman’s New York apartment, sold out quickly. That’s when the women moved online
with a retail site that amassed a cultlike following.
The brand, which is based in New York with a warehouse in Seattle, also has collaborated on collections with Adidas, J. Crew and Rodarte, allowing those brands to offer extended sizes. Universal
Standard recently tapped “Orange Is the New Black” star Danielle Brooks to star in its maternity-wear ad campaign.
In addition to a collection of staples, the brand’s denim was so popular that it had a wait list of 1,700 orders at one point, and it continues to
be a bestseller.
Waldman said the company was born out of her own necessity.
In 2014, Waldman and Veksler couldn’t find a dress for Waldman to wear to a networking event. They searched New York’s Fifth Avenue for a dress and found nothing, with the exception of a few unstylish polyester looks. So they got working on a collection that could fit them both.
Universal Standard is also leading the bodypositivity movement with ad campaigns that feature women of all shapes, sizes and skin tones.
“We wanted to show the industry that inclusivity could be done really well,” Waldman said. “If J. Crew had done plus sizes when I was growing up, I would have never started Universal Standard.”