Why plus-sized fashion makes business sense

Last Sep­tem­ber a dis­pute broke out on social media between eth­i­cal cloth­ing brand Lucy & Yak and a group of influ­encers and writ­ers. Among the charges lev­elled against the com­pa­ny was an accu­sa­tion of fat­pho­bia, with crit­ics accus­ing it of ignor­ing its plus-size fan­base. 

A PR dis­as­ter fol­lowed for the mul­ti­mil­lion-pound busi­ness, which has cul­ti­vat­ed an image of inclu­siv­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This includ­ed a tear­ful video on social media by Lucy & Yak’s founders, Chris Ren­wick and Lucy Green­wood, and sub­se­quent rebut­tals labelling their behav­iour disin­gen­u­ous. 

The pair took steps to address the issue, extend­ing their range up to a size 32, among numer­ous oth­er changes. When con­tact­ed, Lucy & Yak said it had found the expe­ri­ence pos­i­tive over­all, and that it had allowed the brand to reach out to more cus­tomers.

This expe­ri­ence should serve as a cau­tion­ary tale for oth­er brands look­ing to oper­ate in the plus-size cloth­ing mar­ket, which is fore­cast to reach $697bn (about £510bn) in val­ue by 2027, accord­ing to a recent report by Allied Mar­ket Research. One thing is clear: for Gen Z and mil­len­ni­al shop­pers, inclu­siv­i­ty is impor­tant. 

So what are the risks and rewards of embrac­ing (or avoid­ing) size inclu­siv­i­ty? And what can brands do to ensure that cus­tomers believe their efforts are gen­uine?

The plus-size opportunity

Accord­ing to Stephanie Yeboah, a plus-size writer and influ­encer and author of Fat­ti­ly Ever After, there is sim­ply no excuse in 2021 for exclud­ing fat and plus-size peo­ple from your brand. “The last ten years have shown there’s a strong inter­est and huge mar­ket in fat peo­ple want­i­ng to dress styl­ish­ly,” she says. “Cer­tain areas of the fash­ion indus­try are miss­ing a huge trick by con­stant­ly refus­ing to add more sizes or use plus-size women to mod­el their clothes.” 

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty writer and con­sul­tant Aja Bar­ber believes that when brands ignore the plus-size mar­ket, they lean into fat­pho­bia. “You either want peo­ple to wear the clothes or you don’t,” she says, attribut­ing the hes­i­tan­cy to a lega­cy idea in fash­ion that “plus-size bod­ies are not aspi­ra­tional”, which con­tin­ues to per­me­ate the indus­try.

As for cost being a bar­ri­er, the big­ger risk is miss­ing out on the poten­tial finan­cial rewards. Sophie Slater is own­er and co-founder of Bird­song, a made to-order sus­tain­able cloth­ing brand that’s includ­ed up to size 30 from the begin­ning. 

While there may be an ini­tial cost in terms of cre­at­ing pat­terns, pay­ing size graders and find­ing appro­pri­ate fit mod­els, open­ing your­self to a new mar­ket of poten­tial cus­tomers pays div­i­dends. 

“Plus-sizes are real­ly pop­u­lar,” she says. “It has cost us mon­ey to do it prop­er­ly but it’s increased the mar­ket, too.” 

It just doesn’t make good busi­ness sense to ignore the fastest-grow­ing seg­ment of the mar­ket, she says, though there’s also a moral imper­a­tive to being inclu­sive. “If you have mon­ey to spend and are a for-prof­it busi­ness, then there’s sim­ply no excuse.”

Doing it right

Brands that want to extend their range must do it prop­er­ly. For Yeboah, a cru­cial step, though far from the only one, is get­ting the right peo­ple onboard. This means hir­ing tal­ent – be they design­ers, fit­ters, PR and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als or mod­els – who are plus-size and can under­stand the chal­lenges faced by fat peo­ple on a dai­ly basis, as well as what they need to feel includ­ed.

Oth­er­wise, as Bar­ber points out, you risk look­ing disin­gen­u­ous, which could end up hurt­ing your brand more, espe­cial­ly if you’re vocal­ly sup­port­ing diver­si­ty as a means of gain­ing clout. “If you’re say­ing your brand’s fem­i­nism is inter­sec­tion­al, then your prod­ucts need to be inclu­sive — so that includes all dif­fer­ent sizes, abil­i­ties and all dif­fer­ent colours of skin,” she says. 

Yeboah warns brands against extend­ing their range qui­et­ly. “Fat women want to be able to dress well — but we want brands to mean it if they’re extend­ing their ranges.” If they’re hid­ing their plus-size clothes in their mar­ket­ing, she says, then this might sug­gest they aren’t being gen­uine in their efforts.

Yeboah wants to see high-street names car­ry up to a size 26 at min­i­mum, and cites ASOS as an exam­ple of a brand that’s get­ting things right.

A brighter, inclusive fashion future 

Bar­ber empha­sis­es a need to sup­ply well-made, sus­tain­able clothes that will last, or risk wors­en­ing fast fashion’s high envi­ron­men­tal toll. She also points to a tra­di­tion of brands offer­ing only flim­sy, poor­ly made gar­ments to the plus-size mar­ket. “It sends a mes­sage that your body is tem­po­rary,” she says, “that the clothes don’t need to last because you won’t be fat for­ev­er.”

The demand is clear­ly there. In an indus­try that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been built around the con­cept of exclu­siv­i­ty, things are start­ing to change. This even extends to play­ers at the very top of the game, with design­ers like Valenti­no adding to their size offer­ing over the past year. 

Fash­ion plays a huge­ly influ­en­tial role in shap­ing the way we view bod­ies as a soci­ety, so the social imper­a­tive for inclu­sion is clear. But aside from that, it sim­ply makes busi­ness sense to offer clothes that every­one can buy. There are sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties ahead for those com­pa­nies that gen­uine­ly pur­sue inclu­sive­ness. 

“The feel­ing you get as a fat per­son when you wear some­thing you want to wear and not some­thing you have to wear because noth­ing else fits is incred­i­ble,” says Yeboah.