Can you wear only clothes someone choose for you your whole life?
The fashion industry should not disregard potential impact of plus-size people
The fashion industry is failing to attract plus-size people (Lamare, 2018, para 5–6), but the fashion industry is not even aware of it. Because the fashion industry doesn’t meet needs of plus-size people, they are losing a lot of potential consumers. People who work in fashion industry think plus-size people mostly want to wear fluffy clothes like sweater to avoid showing the shape of their bodies. Also, when people think about clothes for plus-size, they easily imagine about fluffy or baggy clothes.
However, that is not what consumers want; plus-size people also want to have clothes which designed not like plus-size (Magner, 2019, para. 11–13). In other words, plus-size people also want to wear fashionable clothes or tight-fitting clothes like people who have straight-size. They also want to show off their body shape and be trendy.
Unfortunately, the problem here is there are not many stores providing plus-size clothes to their customers, so it marginalizes plus-size people. Also, the fashion industry chooses unrealistic representations to advertise themselves by hiring unrealistic models or clothes, and it makes plus-size people feel being rejected from fashion society. For those reasons, the fashion industry needs to reflect plus-size customers’ various needs on their business by changing in supply and improving marketing. For example, the fashion industry can provide more sizes or design options to plus-size people and find proper solution for their current marketing.
The fashion industry marginalizes plus-size people by giving them less options, so plus-size people lose their willing to buy clothes. According to Amy Lamare (2018), reporter, plus-size women cannot find their size in a particular store and remove that store from their list of options (Lamare, 2018, para. 7). Nowadays, there are some brands which provide plus-size design, such as like Dolce & Gabbana, Tanya Taylor, Veronica Beard, Jason Wu and etc. (Larson, 2019, para 14)
However, it is still only few brands, and even they are making plus-size clothes up only a little amount of their clothes. Larson (2019)pointed out there are only 6% of luxury clothing is sold and 11% in online even though the average size of U.S. women is 14 and above.
Again, the fashion industry is disregarding a lot of potential customers, and its’ worth is becoming more than $36.3 billion US dollars by 2025 (Larson, 2019, para. 6). That means, not only plus-size people losing their willing to get clothes, also the fashion industry is losing their huge profit of their market. There are one more problem plus-size people get which about ‘proper design’ to them.
According to Magner (2019), Plus-size people hardly find their size, and when they found the size, they feel uncomfortable with those clothes because designers made the clothes for straight-size and just made it ‘bigger’. Because all people have different body shapes and weight, there should be different ways to measure and make plus-size clothes.
This situation happens because designers really don’t consider about putting more spaces in areas such as back, bust, waist for plus-size. At the end, plus-size people cannot feel comfortable when they wear those clothes which made like straight-size, so it marginalizes plus-people one more time even though they find plus-size in some stores. Even plus-size people feel like that clothes are made with no considerations. (as cited by Magner, para.6–7). Moreover, Lamare pointed that
“Plus-size shoppers represent $ 20 billion in purchasing power”
(Lamare, 2018, para.5–6). Considering Lamare’s point about worth of plus-size clothes, the fashion industry should provide more diverse sizes and comfortable designs for them like Tanya Taylor hired a new tech team for understanding how to fit extended sizes. (Larson, 2019, para. 32) Of course, that solution is good for plus-size customers, also it can make more profit for the fashion industry as much as Larson mentioned in her article.
There are other examples of the fashion industry marginalizing plus-size people, and those are about the fashion industry’s unrealistic marketing and advertisement such as hiring models who don’t have same body with plus-size customers. Differences between ideal plus-size model and real plus-size people makes plus-size people are marginalized from the fashion area: “Many plus-size models are hourglasses, but many plus-size women are NOT,”
said another
“It’s a double fail when already hard-to-fond clothes are then poorly cut.”
(Magner, 2019, para.5) Point of that saying means, still, there is lack of reality for plus-size clothes even though the fashion industry is trying to make their plus-size market bigger. In many medias, the fashion brands show up thin women’s body images for their poster, and there are many side effects of it.
“On average, most models weigh 23% less than the average woman. Twenty years ago, this difference was a mere 8%.”
“Problems with eating disorders have increased over 400% since 1970.”
“Only 5% of US women fit the body type popularly portrayed in today’s advertising.”
“Sixty-nine percent of girls concurred that models found in magazines had a major influence on their concept of what a perfect body shape should look like.”
(as cited by Suggett, P, 2019, para3) As Suggett cited in his article, there are many differences. Plus-size people cannot emphasize with plus-size ideal model’s body because clothes are made without considering real plus-size people’s the body characteristics. Also, unrealistic models make all women’s standard of ‘perfect body’ which should not be decided by others (as cited by Suggett, P, 2019, para3).
The fashion business marketers need to focus on figuring out which factors make their potential consumers lose their willing to buy, and fashion designers need to consider about the comfortable design for their customers. Like Tanya Taylor hired an additional fit model for plus-size, fashion brands should hire more proper models for showing their consideration to plus-size people. (Larson, 2019, para. 32) Then it will make their business better with their customer’s royalty.
In real fashion industry, many women are arguing that there should be more choosing options for plus-size women. There are not many fashion brands have plus-size, even they are providing only few amounts of plus-size and design with poor consideration for it. ‘So many retailers want to dip their toe into plus, but they only offer certain styles they deem ‘plus-appropriate.’ (as cited by Schallon, 2019, para. 14) We can recognize there are some stereotypes that people think plus-size people want to wear standardized styles; plus-size consumers also want to wear more trendy clothes.
“Only a few brands make truly trendy plus-size options, while the rest aren’t very thoughtfully designed for plus bodies. There’s been a forever-long misconception that plus women should dress a certain way — don’t wear horizontal stripes, don’t wear anything too form-fitting, don’t wear shorts, hide your curves, the list goes on — and many brands hold on to that archaic train of thought. We want to wear the same things everyone else is wearing. Yes, that means crop tops!”
(as cited by Schallon, 2019, para. 18) Like this, plus-size people, specially, plus-size women have various needs for having proper sized and designed clothes. If the fashion industry approaches to plus-size people’s needs, it will be perfect way to make customer satisfy and make big profit for themselves. About marketing, the fashion industry needs to follow any brands like Tanya Taylor which was mentioned before for improving their marketing (Larson, 2019, para. 32).
At the end, higher percentage of plus-size market is expected (Larson, 2019, para. 6), so fashion brands should give plus-size people more consideration and show them many efforts to attract them. Because plus-size market is so huge already, a lot of fashion brands are going to be lost in the fashion industry in the future if they don’t try to figure out plus-size people’s needs.
