January 18, 2018
When I was first introduced to Health At Every Size® (HAES), I was working on my PhD in apparel design and studying sport and exercise psychology to help me understand the role of athletic clothing during physical activity. I discovered that not all women like their work-out clothing. However, to my surprise, it wasn’t necessarily the physical discomfort of the clothing itself that was problematic. Rather, the emotional discomfort of shopping presented a huge headache. Indeed, the major stres...
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January 17, 2018
The Average America n Woman Is Now a Size 16
The news has major implications for retailers and the public's view of "average."
We already know that there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the accuracy of women's clothing sizes. In fact, research shows that most of them are total nonsense and based off of "vanity sizing." What's more, it turns out that the information retailers have been using is completely outdated.
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January 17, 2018
As soon as Heidi Zak studied the numbers, she knew it was time to sell a bigger bra.
Zak, founder of the online start-up Third Love, has spent three years building her line. The company now offers 59 sizes, and it is testing 15 more. But demand - especially for larger sizes - is only rising.
Consider, she says: More than 500,000 women remain on the company's waiting list for bras in sizes like 44G and 46K.
"As soon as you look at the data, it's clear: It's a market that's so underserved," Za...
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January 15, 2018
The 67% Project is about the cultural lack of representation of women who are a size 14 and up, but it's also very much about the dearth of plus-size clothing on racks and models on runways and in ads. Dominique Norman is a fashion student with a focus on, and passion for, a more size-inclusive (and racially inclusive) future for the industry. She's currently getting her master's at Parsons; when she was an undergrad at Washington State University, she was the first student to produce a plus-...
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January 14, 2018
"Just because we're plus size, doesn't mean we have to prove that we're healthy," she captioned the Instagram photo, "just as someone who is smaller than us or average size doesn't have to prove they are healthy. We should be able to exist in our bodies."
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January 13, 2018
The average woman in the US wears a size 14 — according to outdated information. A new study published in August in the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education decided to create a more current report.
What the study found was that size 14 is no longer accurate; the average American woman today is actually between a size 16 to 18.
The authors of the study looked at recent data from the Center for Disease Control and compared it to the ASTM International body measurem...
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January 12, 2018
Until recently, it had long been estimated that the average American woman wore a US size 14, or just at the threshold between standard and plus-sizes. However, a new study by Deborah A. Christel and Susan C. Dunn of Washington State University, which was published in the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, suggests that the average woman now wears between a size 16 and 18. Said differently, the average American woman is now, incongruously, considered "plus-size...
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January 12, 2018
According to research from Washington State University assistant professor Deborah Christel, the average U.S. woman wears between a size 16 to 18, Bloomberg reported. And as New York Fashion Week began on Sept. 8, Project Runway co-host Tim Gunn wrote in the Washington Post that designers have failed to make clothes that fit the bodies of many U.S. women.
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January 11, 2018
“People within the plus-sized community, and size-acceptance activists, are changing the conversation, and body positivity is helping, but it’s not helping enough,” said Alysse Dalessandro, independent size-inclusive designer of Ready To Stare and body positive advocate. “And accepting a size 12 [fashion] model doesn’t help a size 28 woman find a pair of jeans. A lot of people are saying, ‘Why aren’t you happy there are more options?’ And I’m happy there are, but it’d be great if you featured...
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January 10, 2018
A professor conducted a “fat fashion” project in her classes by making her students design plus-sized swimsuits, according to a Monday report.
Debbie Christel administered the assignment at Washington State University, where she uses hundreds of customized light points and a 3D body scanner for her research. She discussed her research and teaching in “Fat fashion: Fattening pedagogy in apparel design,” an article she authored in the Fat Studies Journal, reported Campus Reform.
Christel uses ...
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January 09, 2018
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January 08, 2018
A lack of "size diversity" in the fashion industry is not a new issue for many American women, but its prominence is. When Project Runway personality Tim Gunn labeled as a "disgrace" fashion designers' refusal to make clothes that fit most women, he backed up his blunt talk by citing an important source: a new study from Washington State University. Researchers there found that plus-size women are forced to cross-dress to work out. To find out more about why large women can't find activewear ...
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