The Tamesis
I’m increasingly frustrated by how brands can improve our size inclusivity rankings by tokenizing a medium or plus size model without producing a single piece of clothing that caters to the mid-range or full plus size crowd. Some brands that actually make clothes for larger bodies have expressed their frustration to us on this topic, and with good reason. We see tokenism season after season, with the same few curvy supermodels showing up on the runway, and if they’re out of stock, the brand goes back to 100% straight sizing.
According to our recent survey of nearly 700 consumers, nearly half (48%) feel pressured to lose weight, with more citing size challenges when shopping (63%) as a source of this pressure than fashion shows (36%). We tried to highlight this in our FW26 Size Inclusion Report, by tracking size availability on a brand’s e-commerce site or its largest stockist’s website to see if runway presentation consistently equals in-store size presentation.
You can read our findings on this in the main report. But, in the spirit of preliminary research, I took a trip to Bond Street. One leading luxury brand carries sizes up to US size 20, according to the size range on its website. I visited the London flagship store and asked if they had US 20, “for my sister” and the largest size in store was US 12. Having said that, the sales associate said I could order a larger size and that it could be specially made up to a size 20 for customers ordering after the fashion show. Another brand says on its e-commerce page that sizes go up to size 20. US 16, the largest size is sold out (a common theme we found in our research). However, after visiting the store, I was told that the largest size is US 12-14, but “some items come in larger sizes”.
Creative Director and Content Creator Abisola Omole, aka “Abi Marvel,” who I met last year at CPHFW x in Copenhagen fashion business The panel discusses size inclusivity, and such research has already been done. In her “Plus-Size and Passing” series on Instagram, she walks into luxury stores looking for clothes to actually try on, just like a 16-18 year old American girl would. While most brands lack runway presence and there is a perception that larger sizes are not available in stores, she wanted to show that many brands do cater to larger sizes. Marvel recently visited Dior to try out Jonathan Anderson’s debut collection, looking for pieces for both men’s and women’s wear.
When we speak, she’s on her way to Chanel to test-drive Matthieu Blazy’s first collection as a plus-size shopper, now that the frenzy has died down. “Chanel is a great example of a brand that produces plus sizes. Obviously, they’re not perfect. But even today I try on a lot of sizes 50 and 52 [US 16-18]”It’s probably something I didn’t expect,” she said. Her goal is to show plus-size shoppers it’s possible.
