Create What You Want to See In The World
I first met Tamara Malas at CurvyCon, a three day event that brings plus size Brands, Fashionistas, Shopaholics, Bloggers and YouTubers into one space, to chat curvy, shop curvy and embrace curvy.
I was immediately taken aback by the booth that Tamara had — a beautiful, loud and outspoken space featuring Tamara’s theme “Feeling, Feelings,” accompanied by an incredible floral arrangement from brrch flowers (http://www.brrch.com/home). It was unlike anything I had ever seen — especially anything that was targeted to larger-bodied customers like me who are not used to seeing brands put that much effort and creativity into serving us.
This was my image of the brand even before I had a chance to see the clothes. That is when everything changed. The fabrics, colors and designs were so absolutely unique and well-made.
And then I finally got to meet the designer — what a treat that was. She made such an impression on me and I am proud to have the opportunity to share her story.
Tamara is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute in Chicago (SAIC) where she received the Cornelia Steckl Fashion Fellowship for her senior collection. Malas took her newfound knowledge and moved to London to work for Dazed & Confused Magazine. Following her experience in London, Tamara came back to New York where she worked as a design assistant at a variety of high end brands.
Even though Tamara appeared to be living her best life, traipsing around the world and working for cool companies on cool projects, she was secretly struggling with (and trying to recover from) an eating disorder that plagued her for her whole life. This eating disorder effected her physically but also mentally. Tamara was “drained from constantly fighting” herself and “ attempting to live up to imaginary standards.”
Her transformation occurred one morning when she asked herself:
“what if I were to love myself exactly the way that I am today?”
This key question completely changed her perspective and inspired her to launch her eponymous line. Her website says it best:
“I no longer allowed cultural conditioning and social programming to dictate the standard of beauty in my life, and instead I poured that energy into creating something I find beautiful, which manifested in my self-named collection, Tamara Malas. I know many people can relate, so I hope these unique designs, born from my feelings of self love, provide the possibility to make a difference, even in the smallest way.”
After deciding to create her line, one of the next key decisions was what size range she would have. Tamara noticed that most of the higher-end brands always stopped where her size began and she wanted to provide women like her with the opportunity to invest in luxury clothing that fits. After being excluded from high-end designer fashion for decades, Tamara is trying to finally make customers feel included.
One of the things I love the most about Tamara’s line are the conceptual frameworks through which she designs. She has different themes for different seasonal releases. Her first collection, Feeling Feelings, was partially based on her recovery from her eating disorder and was focused on encouraging the wearer to, in fact, feel their feelings.
Tamara Malas believes that her fabric, designs, size-range and brand ethos bring something to the table that other plus-size fashion brands don’t — “a point of view.”
One of the trickier thing that brands carrying sizes above 16/18 face is what to label themselves as. Although Tamara doesn’t believe in labels, she rightfully mentioned that it is hard not to align with plus-size as a label because search engine optimization is based off using the plus-size term. This is one of the more frustrating things that woman who wear “plus-size” clothes have to deal with- constantly being forced to label oneself due to SEO algorithms.
The other challenge brands carrying sizes larger than 16/18 come across is whether or not to label themselves as inclusive. Brands have dealt with this in different ways and although inclusive appears to be the word du-jour, Tamara wanted her brand to focus exclusively on bigger sizes.
Tamara touched-on the increasing complexity of creating and marketing a plus-size brand and pointed to examples of how certain brands were marketing themselves as inclusive and were showing smaller bodies. It is important for Tamara to practice what she preachers — show bigger bodies in her marketing and actually carry sizes for larger bodies. Tamara makes all styles in her line up to a size 32, whereas most high-end companies only go to size 16/18 which tends to really be size 12/14.
What I love about Tamara’s collection are the amazing fabrics she sources. From high-tech Japanese fabrics to hand-woven knits from Bolivia, textile selection is a huge part of what Tamara does and is often very intuitive versus the strict technical attention she gives to every other decision she makes for her line.
In summary, Tamara Malas’ unique designs, stunning textile selection, and authentic brand differentiate her line from the rest of the market. I can’t wait to see what is coming next!
Check out Tamara Malas’ website to see more of her beautiful work: https://tamaramalas.com/
