“The number of skinny jeans we sell would astound one,” Torrid’s president told the Times. More fashionable non-muumuu clothes for plus-sizes are hitting the market, especially in trend-driven plus-size chains like Torrid, for example. However, attitudes toward fat may be shifting. It’s like making computers and then deciding you want to make monitors a monitor is still a computer product, but it’s a whole new kind of engineering.” There are so many variables you never win. “If you have decided to go after the woman who is top-heavy, well, some gain weight in their upper arms and some do not. “Armholes are an issue,” Fasanella told me, by way of example. But even within the subcategories, there are levels of differentiation. You really have to narrow down your customer.” A designer must then find a fit model who represents that type and develop a pattern around her. “As someone getting into plus-size, you can either make clothing that is shapeless and avoid the question altogether or target a segment of the market that, let’s say, favors a woman who gets larger in the hip. “You’ll have some people who gain weight entirely in their trunk, some people who will gain it in their hips,” Fasanella continued. Thin people are more like one another heavier people are less like one another. “But if a woman goes from a size 16 to a 20, you just can’t say with any certainty how her dimensions will change.” “We know pretty well what a size 6 woman will look like if she edges up to a 10 her bustline might increase an inch,” Fasanella said. “The proportions of the body change as you gain weight, but for women within a certain range of size, there is a predictability to how much, born out by research dating to the 1560s,” explained Kathleen Fasanella, who has made patterns for women’s coats and jackets for three decades. You need whole new systems of pattern-making. If you already have a line of clothing and a set system of sizing, you cannot simply make bigger sizes. The most formidable obstacle lies in creating a prototype. Designers shy away from making clothes considered plus-size because doing so is just difficult. The plus-size clothing business accounts for only 18 percent of total revenue in the women’s apparel industry, even though 64 percent of American women are overweight. However, The New York Times Magazine offers one possible answer to why these women are always shot naked, aside from shock value and bragging rights: There simply aren’t very many great clothes made to fit them. Out rolled Glamour’s expanded coverage of plus-size naked models, then came V’s size issue with shot after shot of plus-size model in states of undress - seemingly more scantily clad than the straight-size models in any typical issue of the magazine. Perhaps magazines were trying to re-create the sensation Lizzie Miller made when Glamour shot her nude a year ago. Something we’ve bemoaned repeatedly on this blog is how plus-size models are routinely shot nude, as if for shock value. A number of things feel off about the fashion industry’s supposed movement to embrace and glorify women who are bigger than a size 2.
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