‘We Help Women Express Themselves’: The Growth of Plus Size High Fashion
By David Knight
When you think of high fashion, the first thing that comes to mind — if it’s not penises on the catwalk — is usually stick-thin, gaunt, pouting models. While that’s all well and good for the glamorous top end of the fashion world, how well would the styles they wear translate to the vast majority of ordinary people?
If we’re being honest, probably not too well.
In part, that is due to the changing shape of our bodies over the past few decades, one which has had little impact on high fashion. But there is certainly a market to be capitalised upon, and indeed that is what is happening — the plus size, or outsize, women’s fashion space has been booming in recent years. And don’t forget, plus size doesn’t necessarily mean its customers are obese.
From its origins a century ago with companies like Lane Bryant building on its initial success with maternity outfits by offering clothes for “stout-figured women,” plus size is now an increasingly important part of the fashion industry.
So what exactly does ‘plus size mean’? There is no one universally agreed upon term. The Collins Dictionary says it refers to clothes for “people who are above the average size” — meaning that as the average body grows, so does the lower limit of plus size. But let’s take the definition provided by PLUS Model Magazine, which states that plus size “is an industry standard that applies to any women who is over a size 12.”
And just as plus size models are starting to make an impression on the top end of fashion — the news of their hiring by major labels, or their turn in taking to the catwalk, tends to make headlines — so too has plus size fashion been making waves in the world of e-commerce. According to market research company Mintel, more than half of European women wear plus size clothing, while the plus size market in the UK is set to grow to nearly €8 billion in 2015, an increase of almost 60 percent compared to 2008. Worldwide, Google searches for ‘plus size’ were up by 14 percent in 2014.
Suffering a Lack of Publicity
This trend has in turn opened up the possibility of cracking a massive, growing and underserved market to a tranche of new companies. One such startup is the Aachen-based navabi, which has met with such success since being founded in 2009 that it has just raised a whopping €25 million in new funding in an investment round led by Bauer Venture Partners but also including the company’s previous investors Index Ventures, Seventure Partners, DuMont Venture and Klaus Wecken. The link up with Bauer is important as it gives access to the publishing group’s portfolio of 600 magazines (which includes Grazia in the UK) and over 400 digital products, with a total reach of 22 million customers. This is vital in a branch of the industry that, according to navabi co-founders Bahman Nedaei and Zahir Dehnadi, suffers from a lack of publicity.
The money from the tie up — which also provides an advertising budget — will in part go towards developing navabi’s own-brand offerings, which have quickly grown to account for a quarter of the company’s sales. It also offers more than 100 other brands including Elena Miro and Anna Scholz in the 30 markets it serves, with a round a third of its business coming outside Germany.
According to Dehnadi, navabi’s success can be put down largely to the fact that the growing plus size market, and especially its high fashion segment, is not being served well enough. “There is a big gap between supply and demand,” he sad. “This has been a trend for many, many years, but now it’s at a point where it is almost ridiculous. There are a lot of studies out there which clearly show we are going to become more plus size, but [those in high fashion] are still ignoring them and still sticking to size zero.”
A Very Rebellious Idea
It was the recognition of this need that prodded the two friends into founding their company in Aachen, in the far west of Germany, in 2009. Dehnadi added: “It was a very rebellious idea to say, we don’t care what the fashion industry thinks. We see that these women have a huge demand, we see all this love that we get from them. We see that it is life changing for them. And we see that it’s a really great company that we can build.
“Women are not size zeros. It’s a utopia; it’s a dream that the fashion industry has, it’s not reality.”
Indeed, Dehnadi and his co-founder are dismissive of mainstream fashion’s attitude towards plus size. “Bauer Partners offered us access to their media,” said Nedaei. “In the past we had troubles getting coverage in the media because there is still some kind of stigma regarding plus sizes and being a fashion company. But being in the media is crucial to us in reaching 100 percent of the women in Europe — we are fighting against an ecosystem which believes in a size zero.”
With the mainstream fashion media being largely off limits to navabi, it has turned to the ever-keen blogosphere to help build an entire plus size ecosystem. “Our customers do care very much about finding the right inspiration. So far the media hasn’t really provided that kind of inspiration, so there are, especially in the plus size space, many successful blogs. A huge community.”
Next to the Toilet
It’s certainly easy to imagine this community as one that interacts largely online, given the stigma — real or self-projected — which is attached to plus size. But can the massive growth in online plus size fashion shopping, which is far outpacing its straight size equivalent, be explained by this supposed stigma which would be more apparent around physical stores? “We know that plus size women love to shop online,” Dehnadi explained. “What you refer to [the stigma around shopping in physical plus size stores], it’s definitely one of the reasons. Usually you find plus size stores somewhere around the corner, or if there is a plus size section [as part of a larger store], it is somewhere next to the men’s section or next to the toilet.”
There is, however, another side to the debate. After all, is the growth in the number of women who buy plus size clothing not inexorably linked to the increase in obesity across the globe, and particularly in the Western world? Ultimately, it comes down to the argument between empowerment and dissuasion, but Dehnadi is adamant that providing a supply to fit the demand is the right way to go: “I don’t think there is a 100 percent correlation between obesity and unhealthiness and plus size. The reality is not that plus size equals unhealthy, in the same way that size zero does not necessarily mean very healthy. The way we see it, this is how the world is changing, this is something that has happened, and you see a lot of women given this context who are very unhappy. Fashion is a language, and they cannot express who they are because they don’t get fashion.”
The team navabi see themselves, Dehnadi said, as enablers. “We enable women to be happier, to enjoy life and to express who they are through their fashion, instead of just telling them hey, this is not right for you.”
It is certainly an exaggeration for the pair to claim that their company is bringing fashion to the style-starved plus size masses — plus size is already a major market segment. But the rapid growth of the online sector suggests that it is not only taking business away from physical stores, but also creating new demand. The aim now for navabi is to secure a large enough slice of market share to ensure it becomes plus size itself — and selling its message of a fashion revolution to the women of Europe is the path it has chosen to achieve that.
