Plus-Size Fashion Market – The Past, Present and Future

What is Plus-size?

Women sizes [standard] in inches

Men sizes [standard] in inches

The women plus-size starts from 14 or L onward, while Men from 2XL. Even though the average woman in US, UK requires size 14, surprisingly most retailers’ sizes top out at about size 12.

The Plus-size territory

Crediting to the low or zero birth rates the world population is ageing. Owing to the Time Poverty and much mechanization the urban population, in general. Becoming fat faster and so is the `Fat Bikini` market. The average woman in US or EU falls now generally in 16 to 18 sizes. In US, one in ten aged 2 to 5, one in five aged 6 to 11 and one in five aged 12 to 19 is categorised obese. Indeed, normal weight levelers are now a minority as over 70 percent of all Americans are either overweight or obese. One statistics say, the woman that wore size 8 in 1985 in US now requiring size 14. In US, the plus-size market is valued to be 17.5 billion dollars, while in UK it is estimated to be worth 6.6 billion pounds. So to say, more women wear a size 16 than do women who wear size 2 or 0 combined.

On the other side of the Atlantic, obesity is on the rise in young people that adding prospects to the ever increasing 5.08 billion pounds plus-size market. Surveys results hinted 26.8 percent of women in the UK were either obese or morbidly obese in 2015. Obesity amongst the teens is on the rise. NPD reports that more teen girls than ever are buying plus-size clothes shedding lights on Plus-Size market while blackening the market prospects for juniors already experiencing a downtrend. The tilting of teens toward Plus-Size is something to be very worth noting and alarming too to the industry that so far considered plus-size clothing as an afterthought. Undeniably, all these facts pointing to a bright and rosy market flickers on the horizon.

Though there exist no credible studies in printed form so far, the conditions of the populace in rest of the world are more or less identical.

The Frustrations

It doesn’t fit me well, colors no good, fashion obsolete, priced unfairly – the venting of disappointments of Plus-sizers all around.

As far as Plus sizers are concerned, Men are more or less accommodated by the standard offerings of fashion houses, but the women not, thus remain in the center point of all discussions about plus sizes. From ill-fitting to monotonous colors to out of fashions are all that `curvy `chicks are complaining about their draperies. Frustrating too are the prices tagged with their sizes. Plus size women feel deprivation of justice to the pricing of their sizes in comparison with the standard sizes. If one basic Tee for standard size priced at $4, bears a tag of $10 plus for the plus size. Their world goes up side down when they experience ill fit even at that inflated prices. Since fashion industry lacks a uniform sizing chart, an extra large size of a store that fits a plus sizer might not possibly fit her one from another. What more to complain about, Plus-sizers are further marginalized as clothes belong to their sizes rarely appear in advertisements or shop windows.

Surveys conclude with the outcome that many women don’t like shopping in a separate category. In a 2015 survey of UK shoppers by Report Linker, 60.90% of plus-size consumers opted to shop a retailer’s core line rather than a plus-size offshoot. American Online retailer ModCloth experienced similar output when it surveyed 1500 women aging 18 to 35 wear sizes 16 and up. Approximately 65 percent said they wanted to see plus sizes draperies in the same section together with other sizes while 60% reported embarrassment for them if they so induced to shop in a separate store or department.

Why not Plus-Size, because the grapes are sour

Mark-Evan Blackman, the Chairperson of the Menswear Design Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, N.Y says, “She will buy if it fits her.”

Fashion designers and retailers alike have long been judged the plus-sizers as a high-risk segment, and a somewhat difficult niche for them to predict and navigate through. Even though over 60% of women in US alone are overweight or obese, plus-size clothing sell accounted for just 18% in 2016, according to NPD Group, a research firm that monitors consumer purchase data from over 165000 stores of the world. Unfortunately, Industry insiders use these sorts of statistics to qualify their marginalization of the Plus segment. It’s like grapes are sour, so better don’t taste. When brands can’t succeed their ill-fitting plus-size apparels, console them with the idea that they don’t belong any plus-sizers as their customers.

The studies and the data analysed as of to date revealed the conception is far from the truth. “What Britain Wears: Niche Clothing 2017” the report points out that one in every five pounds spent on womenswear in 2017 was spent on plus-size garments. Designers, retailers, have for decades, treated the Plus-Size women as an entirely different species of consumers considering them as protective and not fashion-oriented. But today’s surveys and reports maintain that plus customers are pushing for color, on-trend fashion, and clothes that show off their bodies.

Fashion industry sidelined Plus-size garments being more expensive and accommodating the higher cost is not regularly feasible because of boomerang effect. By far, lingerie is the item that sweats the designers most while designing for plus-sizers. “Unlike pants or dresses, which can be scaled up using the same template, new bra sizes need to be specially designed and engineered, with special fabric, wires, hooks, straps and more. In fact, there are some 37 components in all. It’s not easy to get it all right, especially for full-figure variants that have to provide enough lift and also be comfortable,” Suzette Walters, J.C. Penny’s vice president of intimate apparel and women’s accessories maintained while talking to Bloomberg. The experience of ThirdLove is different to what J.C. Penny experiences. The ThirdLove, an American company producing and selling bras, underwear, loungewear, and nightwear offers more than 59 sizes, with the demand for larger sizes just hiking. At one stage they had 500,000 women remain on the company’s waiting list for bras in sizes like 44G and 46K.

Associated with the cost factor is the very image factor fashion industry is traditionally concerned about. Honestly, all these fear factors eyeing actually on the lack of willingness to serve an unserved market. Traditionally fat peoples are branded negatively in our society. There are industry members don’t like to get out of the Cool or Chic images by incorporating Plus-Sizes in their lines.

How to shape it to fit them well

Technically designing Plus-size draperies not as easy as regulars are. There may be a big gap in between size 6 and 12 than that of what is in between size 6 and 4 as because our bodies generally don’t scale up uniformly with every increase in the size chart.

It’s easy to calibrate the body dimension changes from a size 6 to a size 8 or 10, but measuring the changes in higher sizes become more difficult owing to irregular distributions of weights among peoples. One may require more width in his chest or her bust, while another may require more in waist or thighs even though maintains same weight as a whole.

The fitting problem continues to get worse the way fashion houses calibrate their size charts. A women’s clothing brand usually hires the popular fit model of size 6, being the standard one to work out size chart of a garment. The brand then does some sorts of grading using software to work out the other sizes in the chart. Depending upon their own business policies the brands add inches or more or less to the body dimensions to arrive at a graded size chart for a particular style.