What really is plus-size fashion? Experts weigh in on the costs and trends

Kristen Rogers, CNN

(CNN) — Having a bigger, curvier body, and needing the type of clothing that accommodates or even highlights it, has become (somewhat) more accepted by the fashion and retail industries. Recent years have seen greater commitments to size diversity from clothing brands and the rise of plus-size models such as Ashley Graham, Paloma Elsesser, Precious Lee and Tess Holliday.

But what’s really considered a plus-size body or garment?

The “unsatisfying answer” is that it’s “kind of impossible to define,” said Lauren Downing Peters, an assistant professor of fashion studies at Columbia College Chicago and author of the new book “Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industry.”

Though there are no universal criteria for plus-size clothing, the general perception of what constitutes plus-size has changed over time.

“There’s that quote that always goes, ‘Well, Marilyn Monroe was a size 14,’” noted Carmen Keist, an associate professor in the family and consumer sciences department at Bradley University in Illinois. “Those numbers … don’t really mean anything, because a size 14 in the ‘50s was something totally different than what it means now.”

Most vintage garments are at least a few times smaller than their equivalent sizes today. In sizing tables from 1915 to 1920, plus-size — then known as “stout size” — began at a 30-inch waist and a 42-inch bust, according to Downing Peters. But today, that’s equivalent to a size eight or 10.

Monroe wouldn’t be considered plus-size by today’s standards, as “we’ve seen size inflation over the last 100 years,” Downing Peters continued. “Sizing is a construct, and it’s shifted over time as ideas about what constitutes a (plus-size) body have evolved, as well.”

In both the United States and the United Kingdom, the average woman today is a size 16 (though a British 16 is equivalent to a 12 in the US). Sixty-seven percent of US women are considered plus-size, Downing Peters said. But the largest size many retailers offer is a 12, according to Statista.

“So there’s much more incentive for retailers and brands to enter into the plus-size sector,” she added.

How are bigger bodies sized?

When it comes to sizing, labels and retailers can make their own rules. “Most brands will use their own fit models just to designate their pattern blocks,” Downing Peters explained, “which means that their sizing conventions are going to be based on that model’s body — and are going to vary wildly from brand to brand.”

These sizing practices partly explain why anyone, regardless of whether they’re plus-size or sample size, can be one size at one store and another somewhere else — or why two garments from different brands that are both, say, a size 12, may fit a would-be buyer’s body very differently. Some retailers’ plus-size range runs from 12 to 18, while brands solely focused on plus-size wear go up to size 42, experts said. Other brands, particularly in the high fashion space, do not accommodate plus-size customers at all.

The need to group customers into discrete sizes can be traced back to the late 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era of mass-produced, ready-to-wear clothing, said Emma McClendon, assistant professor of fashion studies at St. John’s University in New York. Built for scale, these processes largely replaced traditional artisan tailoring, while incentivizing clothes-makers to cater to the most common body shapes and proportions.

Keist recommends people use objective measurements and brands’ own size charts to find clothing that fits well, rather than simply going by the number on any given brand’s tags.

The difference between plus-size and curve

The term “curve” denotes a push toward more inclusive language for bigger clothing — particularly among those who consider the term “plus-size” to be derogatory language that has “unfairly othered” women of certain body types, Downing Peters said. Curve also describes fashions suitable for people whose bodily proportions are curvier than average, regardless of their weight or size, experts said.

Curve fashion “generally is for people that have more of a pear body shape,” Keist said, clarifying that “body shape is not body size.”

“My hips are the widest part of my body,” she added. “So the curve is to accommodate — especially in pants — where the hip is wider than what would be a statistically proportionate sizing.”

“Curve jeans can be plus size, but standard sizes can also be curvy,” Downing Peters said. “These jeans are basically just cut on a more curvaceous pattern block rather than one that’s more youthful and straight up and down.”

The male equivalent of plus-size is typically “big and tall,” and there are some dedicated big-and-tall stores.

“But on the whole, men’s fashion tends to be more size-inclusive, meaning that if you’re a larger man, you can essentially shop in one section, where you’ll have a much larger range of sizes,” Downing Peters said. “This is just a reflection of the way that larger women are perceived and marginalized within our society, and is very much enveloped in beauty ideals.”

The cost of bigger clothes

Producing plus-size clothing can cost a little more, but the extra expense isn’t as much about additional materials as it is research and development, Downing Peters said.

“That means looking at who (the) consumer is,” she explained, “and also looking at demographic trends in the proportion of plus-size women.”

“What’s even more expensive,” she added, “is devising all new patterns for larger sizes, because you can’t just take the blocks upon which you’re working and make them larger, you have to completely reconceive the proportions.”

Historically, this extra expense has trickled down to customers; it’s colloquially known as the “fat tax,” which could make plus-size garments as much as 25% more expensive than standard-size equivalents, Downing Peters said.

But amid the burgeoning body positivity movement — behind which is the idea of proudly accepting one’s body, even if it doesn’t conform to societal ideals — some brands have introduced equal pricing by absorbing the additional costs themselves or by slightly raising prices across all their lines, Keist said.

A changing industry — for the better, and the worse

How inclusive or representative a plus-size range is may also depend on the company’s values or aesthetic.

“You can’t argue with the fact that the fashion industry in the United States has become more inclusive,” Downing Peters said. “But we haven’t reached true size equity, by any stretch of the imagination.”

Some brands “tap into the visuals of inclusivity by featuring visibly larger than average plus-size models in their advertising materials,” Downing Peters said.

But, all too often, brands’ offerings for plus-size customers “are very narrow” in scope, Keist said.

Luxury labels can be even less accommodating, and are “much more forthright about the fact that the plus-size consumer isn’t their target consumer,” Downing Peters said.

Getting plus-size or curve models casted in these brands’ campaigns or runway shows is still an uphill battle, IMG model agent Mina White told CNN in April. White, who represent models including Ashley Graham and Paloma Elsesser, has often been told that producing larger sizes is considered too much of a “financial lift,” she claimed.

“I don’t believe that it is,” she said. “I believe that it’s people not being properly educated on how to do this right.”

With this longstanding culture of exclusion still to unravel, and the rebirth of ‘90s-era “heroin chic” and slender Y2K fashion, some experts are raising renewed concerns about the state of inclusion and size diversity (or lack thereof) in fashion. “Many fear that the gains that we’ve made in inclusivity in the fashion industry are going to be lost,” Downing Peters said.

Because even if cultural trends are re-lionizing thinness, bodies have, statistically, been getting larger over the years.

“I’m flabbergasted that companies aren’t more inclusive (in) their clothing, because then that literally just means more money for them,” Keist said. The dearth of plus-size clothing adds to a stigma that makes people with bigger bodies feel marginalized, she added.

“I grew up when ‘heroin chic’ was really popular, and there was very little clothing for me. I couldn’t go shopping with my friends because they were thinner than I was… and I would have to come up with reasons why I wasn’t trying anything on, because I was embarrassed,” she explained. “Because that’s what society made me feel, that I should be embarrassed about my size.”

Some retailers, however, are not only offering more diverse sizes — they’re deviating from plus-size tropes now often seen as problematic, such as colors, patterns or fits that assume plus-size people want to, or should, hide their bodies.

Other stores have meanwhile stopped separating standard and plus-size clothing into different departments, which may help eliminate stigma, Keist said. Brands that have been praised for developing a more inclusive plus-size space include Meijer, Universal Standard, Wild Fang, 11Honore, Dia & Co. and Lane Bryant. A few high-fashion brands, including Christian Siriano and Michael Kors, have also made some inroads.

“As a plus-size person trying to dress in this world,” Keist said, “I’m really excited about that, thinking about (how) even a company like Torrid didn’t exist when I was in my teens, and how much different my experiences would have been if I‘d had clothing with more options available in my sizes.”

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