Tomima's Blog – Lingerie & Underwear Expert

 

Every once in a while, you read an article, and you just can’t get it out of your mind.That happened for me last month with the New York Times article, Plus-Size Wars.

It was a rather lengthy article about the on-going debate over skinny models and body image.  But, several data points in the article resonated with me as it relates to the challenge we have at HerRoom helping and satisfying our customers who buy the larger bra and panty sizes.

Here are the current statistics.  The average clothing size for women in America is a size 14.  The average American woman weighs 164.7 lbs.  64% of American women are overweight, with more than 1/3 being in the obese category.  And, here is the real kicker: plus-size clothing only represents 18% of total revenue in women’s clothing – and it’s been fairly constant over the past 20 years.  So, more than half of all American women fall into this plus-size category, and are buying less than 20% of all clothing.  And this statistic was down to 10% in the years 2008 and 2009.

The article then went into a very interesting explanation of the complicated challenges clothing makers have in trying to clothe the plus-size market.  We all know that body proportions change as we gain weight.  Manufacturers, over the years, have been able to very predictably guage where those changes are from sizes 2 to 12 and how much of a measurement increase there is between sizes.  A pattern maker can take a base pattern and make subtle measurement changes in certain spots on a pattern to come up with the other sizes for a particular garment.  This is called pattern grading.  This technique is so predictable that many of the grading changes date back to the 16th century.  But, here is the big but… after a size 14, there is no predictability or certainty where and how the dimensions change.  We women simply get fat differently when we get up into these sizes.

So, here are the plus-size challenges for clothing manufacturers:

1. They can’t grade up patterns to create the larger sizes.

2. They are forced to choose if the plus-size body they are going to design for is trunk, breast, or hip-heavy.

3. It’s difficult to find the right fit model for each size they are trying to make clothing for.

The lion’s share of poor reviews on HerRoom go to bras that come in plus sizes.  My team and I work so hard to provide our customers with the best fitting information possible on each bra that we offer for sale.  We read customer reviews, talk to the manufacturers and go to retail stores to get as much fit information on our bras as we can. We then post our fit findings on our product pages and I personally include them in my ‘Tomima Tips.’  So, when we see a comment from a plus-size woman that our fitting information didn’t work for her, we all get very frustrated.

But now we have new understanding.  Take women that wear a 48F bra, for example.  They are not all alike – one can have particularly large arms, another can have a narrow ribcage, another may hold a lot of her weight in her back.  It’s really impossible to find a universal bra that will fit everyone. 

Let me close this post by saying that my team and I will continue to root out and communicate to you all the bra fitting comments we learn.  We are now just going to be smarter about asking better questions to give better fit advice to the plus size bra wearers out there.

 

Find Plus Size lingerie at HerRoom in these departments:
Plus-Size Lingerie

 

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