By 2010, the average US woman's weight had grown to 166.2 lbs, and has been on an upward trajectory ever since. Roll forwards to 2019: if a woman were a size-16, she would probably not feel embarrassment, and almost certainly not shame. But then again, today's size-16 woman may not believe this is her size: actually, she might not have any idea what size she really is. As the population has grown heavier, the standard sizes being retailed have stretched their seams and become more generous, and some brands have gone even further and adopted so-called 'vanity sizing', whereby they have been sneakily moving their sizes upward, in tune with the waistlines of their customers. They have capitalised on the fact that virtually all people would prefer to think they are a smaller size rather than a larger one, and that a size label can be used as a subtle tool of flattery. Indeed, some women will not even think of trying on a garment if it is labelled as larger than the size they relate to. So, for some brands, what would have been a size-14 in 1960 has unceasingly crept upwards and would fit (an already stretched) size-16 today.
This explains why a 2019 standard size-16 woman (who is already larger than a size-16 lady of the 1960s), often wears a 14. Such a person, when she takes a selfie in a crowded place, notices that she looks like everyone else in the background: she certainly doesn't appear to be 'plus size', if that's supposed to be larger than everyone else. She looks 'average', she feels 'normal', and she relates to being a size-14 why shouldn't she be wearing a 'mainstream' size? Her expectations for fashion are not as low as her grandmother's, and she's wondering why she an average person (an 'everywoman?') is having such difficultly finding something to fit her properly.
But then again, is she really a size-16? If we examined this particular woman, she is revealed to be a size-14/16 bust, a size-14 waist and a size-18 hip (a 'pear' shape). Her sizing mismatch is entirely normal: very few women have what is called the 'perfectly proportioned' body shape (one size all over), and that matters a lot more for larger women than it does for smaller ones. This is because as female bodies put on weight, the extra mass is not usually evenly distributed. Each woman possesses a particular body shape, meaning that, for example, if a woman is destined to wear her extra flesh on her bottom (a typical pear shape), by the time she has grown to a larger size, her derriere will have increased far more than anywhere else on her body. This is in contrast to her friend who stores her weight on her bust, giving her an extra cup-size or two as she gets bigger, although her bottom stays relatively svelte. By the time these different body shapes reach the top-end of the sizing scale, their bodies have radically diverged, meaning that they need to wear differently sized apparel on different parts of the body, and crucially although they are the same height and weight, they cannot wear the same size clothing as each other. The busty woman, for example, may end up wearing size-24 tops, whilst still slipping into size-18 or 20 trousers, the exact inverse of her pear-shaped friend.
Some plus-size brands have reacted to this diversity of shape by developing grading to fit a particular version of woman, their 'muse'. When consumers find a brand that tailors to their own body shape, this will usually become a firm favourite, while those for whom the fit doesn't work will often learn the hard way never to order from this range again.
This is not to say that the plus-size sector has made concerted attempts to find out the body shapes of their consumers and match them with a proportionally correct array of diverse gradings. In fact, it is extremely difficult to gather body data from this cohort (who dislike being analysed and sized) and it has not yet been achieved anywhere near satisfactorily. In any case, until the correct fit technology has been developed, targeting a very diverse inventory to the correct sections of the customer base at the point of sale would be impractical. Many of the brands that have adopted a grading based on a 'non average' body shape have just opted for the 'hourglass' figure: probably one of the rarest of all the variants, and hardly a breakthrough for fitting 'everywoman': it simply replaces one impossible ideal (ultra-slimness) with another (perfect hourglass). Doubtless this body shape has been singled out because the fashion has embraced the myth of the 'curvy' woman: a sexy uberwoman, who exudes an exaggerated femininity and makes 'body positivity' more palatable for an industry that finds the sight of extra female flesh very difficult to stomach if it is in the wrong place, such as, for instance, the stomach.
But the variations in cut in larger apparel are not always deliberate. Occasionally, the plus-size sector suffers with the same trouble that afflicts each sector of fashion: instances of random variability. Sometimes there are technical problems in the production of garments, meaning that items are cut too small, too large, or a strange shape. This is exacerbated by the sheer difficulty in correctly grading larger garments.
When the pattern cutters struggle with those plus-size issues (which is surprisingly common), this also muddies the water with some consumers' understanding of their size. The person trying on a garment may believe that the size is too small when a pair of trousers is not long enough in the rise, for example, or, if there is no bust darts in a particular blouse, she may conclude that all that loose fabric is evidence that the garment is too large. She may choose a different size the next time in the mistaken belief that she has learned something about her size.
Retailers have also had to grapple with a greater internalised level of plus-sized customers' own 'size acceptance' issues. The problem of garments being rejected because they are labeled with sizes that consumers find unacceptable or depressing has driven some in the sector to alter their whole system to make it less obvious. Some have sized their garments S (1618), M (2022), L (2426), and so on; others, L (18), XL (20), XXL (22), XXXL (24), etc. actually, the permutations of these are mind-boggling and the antithesis of standardization: the actual object being to make the sizing more opaque and anonymous.
So our size-16 2019 woman is confronted by a bewildering array of sizing, grading, labeling and other confusing solutions or missteps. There may have been logical reasons as to why these diverse systems evolved, but there is none in trying to understand and navigate them: those that are not deliberately opaque are simply too complicated, random or impractical to be helpful the long forgotten reason why a sizing system was developed in the first place.
But then again, is she really a size-16? If we examined this particular woman, she is revealed to be a size-14/16 bust, a size-14 waist and a size-18 hip (a 'pear' shape). Her sizing mismatch is entirely normal: very few women have what is called the 'perfectly proportioned' body shape (one size all over), and that matters a lot more for larger women than it does for smaller ones. This is because as female bodies put on weight, the extra mass is not usually evenly distributed. Each woman possesses a particular body shape, meaning that, for example, if a woman is destined to wear her extra flesh on her bottom (a typical pear shape), by the time she has grown to a larger size, her derriere will have increased far more than anywhere else on her body. This is in contrast to her friend who stores her weight on her bust, giving her an extra cup-size or two as she gets bigger, although her bottom stays relatively svelte. By the time these different body shapes reach the top-end of the sizing scale, their bodies have radically diverged, meaning that they need to wear differently sized apparel on different parts of the body, and crucially although they are the same height and weight, they cannot wear the same size clothing as each other. The busty woman, for example, may end up wearing size-24 tops, whilst still slipping into size-18 or 20 trousers, the exact inverse of her pear-shaped friend.
It is often mentioned that our population has changed size: the critical fact that it has largely changed shape is rarely referenced; yet this has had the greatest affect on the fit and size requirements of this generation of shoppers.
Some plus-size brands have reacted to this diversity of shape by developing grading to fit a particular version of woman, their 'muse'. When consumers find a brand that tailors to their own body shape, this will usually become a firm favourite, while those for whom the fit doesn't work will often learn the hard way never to order from this range again.
This is not to say that the plus-size sector has made concerted attempts to find out the body shapes of their consumers and match them with a proportionally correct array of diverse gradings. In fact, it is extremely difficult to gather body data from this cohort (who dislike being analysed and sized) and it has not yet been achieved anywhere near satisfactorily. In any case, until the correct fit technology has been developed, targeting a very diverse inventory to the correct sections of the customer base at the point of sale would be impractical. Many of the brands that have adopted a grading based on a 'non average' body shape have just opted for the 'hourglass' figure: probably one of the rarest of all the variants, and hardly a breakthrough for fitting 'everywoman': it simply replaces one impossible ideal (ultra-slimness) with another (perfect hourglass). Doubtless this body shape has been singled out because the fashion has embraced the myth of the 'curvy' woman: a sexy uberwoman, who exudes an exaggerated femininity and makes 'body positivity' more palatable for an industry that finds the sight of extra female flesh very difficult to stomach if it is in the wrong place, such as, for instance, the stomach.
But the variations in cut in larger apparel are not always deliberate. Occasionally, the plus-size sector suffers with the same trouble that afflicts each sector of fashion: instances of random variability. Sometimes there are technical problems in the production of garments, meaning that items are cut too small, too large, or a strange shape. This is exacerbated by the sheer difficulty in correctly grading larger garments.
When the pattern cutters struggle with those plus-size issues (which is surprisingly common), this also muddies the water with some consumers' understanding of their size. The person trying on a garment may believe that the size is too small when a pair of trousers is not long enough in the rise, for example, or, if there is no bust darts in a particular blouse, she may conclude that all that loose fabric is evidence that the garment is too large. She may choose a different size the next time in the mistaken belief that she has learned something about her size.
Retailers have also had to grapple with a greater internalised level of plus-sized customers' own 'size acceptance' issues. The problem of garments being rejected because they are labeled with sizes that consumers find unacceptable or depressing has driven some in the sector to alter their whole system to make it less obvious. Some have sized their garments S (1618), M (2022), L (2426), and so on; others, L (18), XL (20), XXL (22), XXXL (24), etc. actually, the permutations of these are mind-boggling and the antithesis of standardization: the actual object being to make the sizing more opaque and anonymous.
A traditional industry response to this 'size resistance' conundrum has nothing to do with sizing or grading, but nevertheless brings a little more confusion into the scene. For generations, many specialist plus-size designers have resorted to force majeure, and used fabric tech or design to bear on the problem. Fabrics with extreme stretchy qualities are used to create 'easy fit' ('fits size 1622') apparel, or drapy, baggy, or wrap-around styles ('one size fits all') creations to offer amorphous sizing. Women who wear these garments can live in a twilight zone of perpetual 'size denial', sometimes losing all track of what size they really are, which can be a problem when they need to buy something else (say, formal workwear for an interview), where their latest sizing requirements come as a source of dissonance.
So our size-16 2019 woman is confronted by a bewildering array of sizing, grading, labeling and other confusing solutions or missteps. There may have been logical reasons as to why these diverse systems evolved, but there is none in trying to understand and navigate them: those that are not deliberately opaque are simply too complicated, random or impractical to be helpful the long forgotten reason why a sizing system was developed in the first place.

Plus-size fashion: the new Gold Rush?
This is a copy of an article written for WhichPLM.In today's guest post, Emma Hayes, womenswear customer fit expert and founder of At Last, explores the many issues around today's 'plus size' market, and what we can do to better this. Emma has worked in retail for over three decades, with a specific focus on womenswear and lingerie, and is fascinated by bodyshape diversity.
In the UK we are often told that the average woman is size-16 (a difficult fact to prove, lthough it's known that larger women make up around half the population), yet the percentage spend in the plus-size fashion sector lags at around 22%. So it looks like larger women are spending less than half of what they might be expected to do.
There is no consensus as to what constitutes the size range for 'plus-size', but it's clear there is a dearth of choice of apparel offered from size-16 upwards. In Britain, premium brands like Marina Rinaldi and fashion-forward Anna Scholz, stand among the few honourable exceptions to the rule that there is no top-end in plus-size fashion. Mid-pocket fashion fares little better: European e-tailer, Navabi, is one of the few that can use the words 'quality' or 'design' about plus-size without hyperbole. The vast majority of British apparel in this size range rests firmly in the non-designer, value sector.
The same applies in the US, where a few brave brands have created fashion-forward outposts in a largely underwhelming landscape. Most American women are forced into the same, fairly narrow price-point as their UK counterparts, having to put up with a similar lack of design creativity. In both markets the vast majority of plus-size apparel is made from stretchy, cheaper fabrics, modified for a non-specific fit. It's shocking to find that tracking down a classy, well-made and functional business suit that fits a size-24, for example, is a big ask for these women regardless of the fact that there are businesswomen aplenty who are asking for just that. Fashion's disappointing offering to one half of the female population means it would be easy to fit a list of all of the main plus-size players in this one article, yet would be difficult even to calculate the length of such a list of 'mainstream' sized brands.

It doesn't take a long time browsing through 'size acceptance' social media to get the feeling that plus-size womenswear consumers are not happy. On one hand, they've noticed that they are being offered nothing like the choice of the fashion-forward looks they aspire to, and, on the other, these women also make persistent complaints about ill-fitting clothing. It does appear that this cohort is suffering from considerably worse grading problems than their 'mainstream' sized equivalents.
Thus resonates the persistent drumbeat of bad news about the fit-related returns that are plaguing this sector. Brands can be very secretive about their failures, but there are dark places in plus-size e-commerce where returns rates of up to 70% (far worse than the already abysmal returns rate of 'mainstream' sizes) are whispered about, the lion's share of which is reported to be due to 'fit problems'.
All in all, something is very wrong in the state of plus-size.
Could fit be at the root of all plus-size fashion's woes?
The answer to this question is that it would appear so. Women come in a range of bodyshapes. To name a few: 'apple', 'pear' and 'busty' (men's physiques are less diverse). Among slimmer women these various types are often evident, but it is in the plus-size cohort that they become really exaggerated. Put simply, each female body stores its weight in a particular pattern (it's fairly rare to have it spread evenly all over), meaning that, as a woman puts on weight, whichever part of her physique was comparatively large to begin with, continues to grow, while other areas become proportionally smaller, exaggerating the shape. Therefore, the larger a women becomes, the more likely she is not able to squeeze into apparel that is made for her size, but not her shape.
The fashion industry has largely soldiered on trying to ignore this inconvenient fact. Sending out apparel in standard grading and sizing to a market that is anything but standard is like throwing mud against a wall and hoping it will stick. The resultant slurry of returns is clogging up the industry.
The chronic fit problem particularly plagues e-commerce, because it doesn't presently offer consumers the opportunity to try garments on prior to buying them. This has meant the industry has been forced to ignore designer, tailored, fashion-forward and expensive clothing, or anything else that relies on a very specific fit, which would probably stand no more than a one-in-six chance of hitting the mark. Faced with the tidal wave of returns, most of this sector has had to wriggle its way right down to the bottom of the price, variety and quality scale, so much of the offer comprises 'easy-fit', cheaper, predictable garments.

Yet those with imagination look at a stunted industry and see only a huge, exciting opportunity, with billions just waiting to be disgorged by digital disruption. Apparel businesses are still using sizing systems that were developed for last century's technology. With present-day advancements, so-called online 'fit tools' will soon be capable of identifying a consumer's individual bodyshape and match it with the corresponding apparel. It's like California just before the first prospector struck gold.
A radical re-think
The requisite garments are not yet in fashion's inventory: clothing will have to be graded specifically for an individual's body shape, dictated by a feedback loop of data gleaned from a large enough sample of consumers just like her, using those same fit tools. Apparel will be manufactured in a series of differing, niche shapes (mass, rather than individual customisation) in shorter runs using advanced digital systems at every stage.
If this sounds seductively easy, it shouldn't: is very complicated, and as with all such situations the trick will be to simplify it as much as possible from the start. The industry will initially use judgement and subtle customer knowledge to cluster the metrics into meaningful groups. There will be a trial and error period at the beginning where the data (which has never been so widely mined for this cohort, or any other) is gathered and analysed. This process has the added complication that a woman's bodyshape dictates more than just the metrics of her apparel; working along with her own taste, it has fit and style preference implications, too. However, understanding these aspects just represents yet another way of better serving the consumer.
And this is just the beginning. The bodyshape data will ultimately be used to create better-fitting apparel for people in all sizes and shapes (the slimmer cohort will also end-up getting a better fit), and achieve a more equal, diverse clothing offer to everyone, whether they are minority groups, fitness junkies, disabled people or have otherwise outlier bodyshapes. It will allow the development of curated apparel offers, enabling brands to benefit from increased sell-through, and individual customisation for specific purposes (say, bridal wear, occasional or, indeed, that smart work suiting). It will slash fashion's shameful carbon footprint and boost the bottom line. It will market all aspects of the fashion industry (from top luxe at one end, to budget fast fashion at the other, and everything in between) to the neglected half of the female population. This will open up billions of dollars in increased commerce.
The first step is the development of the fit tools and associated input technology (like handheld scanning, for example, as relying on customers' willingness and ability to input their own measurements will not be scalable). It will not be an immediate process, and the fashion and tech industries have to come together to dig-in for a long haul, being prepared to invest time as well as resources. Researching, acquiring, partnering and developing these advances should be the number-one priority for those fashion brands that do not want to be left behind by the next great leap forward in digital technology.
There is no consensus as to what constitutes the size range for 'plus-size', but it's clear there is a dearth of choice of apparel offered from size-16 upwards. In Britain, premium brands like Marina Rinaldi and fashion-forward Anna Scholz, stand among the few honourable exceptions to the rule that there is no top-end in plus-size fashion. Mid-pocket fashion fares little better: European e-tailer, Navabi, is one of the few that can use the words 'quality' or 'design' about plus-size without hyperbole. The vast majority of British apparel in this size range rests firmly in the non-designer, value sector.
The same applies in the US, where a few brave brands have created fashion-forward outposts in a largely underwhelming landscape. Most American women are forced into the same, fairly narrow price-point as their UK counterparts, having to put up with a similar lack of design creativity. In both markets the vast majority of plus-size apparel is made from stretchy, cheaper fabrics, modified for a non-specific fit. It's shocking to find that tracking down a classy, well-made and functional business suit that fits a size-24, for example, is a big ask for these women regardless of the fact that there are businesswomen aplenty who are asking for just that. Fashion's disappointing offering to one half of the female population means it would be easy to fit a list of all of the main plus-size players in this one article, yet would be difficult even to calculate the length of such a list of 'mainstream' sized brands.
The logic is clear: arguably 50% of the population is not being offered anything like a satisfactory breadth of choice on which to spend their money. Admittedly, this market is projected to grow an extremely healthy 7.1% in the next few years, yet even at this rate it is unlikely ever to catch up.

It doesn't take a long time browsing through 'size acceptance' social media to get the feeling that plus-size womenswear consumers are not happy. On one hand, they've noticed that they are being offered nothing like the choice of the fashion-forward looks they aspire to, and, on the other, these women also make persistent complaints about ill-fitting clothing. It does appear that this cohort is suffering from considerably worse grading problems than their 'mainstream' sized equivalents.
Thus resonates the persistent drumbeat of bad news about the fit-related returns that are plaguing this sector. Brands can be very secretive about their failures, but there are dark places in plus-size e-commerce where returns rates of up to 70% (far worse than the already abysmal returns rate of 'mainstream' sizes) are whispered about, the lion's share of which is reported to be due to 'fit problems'.
All in all, something is very wrong in the state of plus-size.
Could fit be at the root of all plus-size fashion's woes?
The answer to this question is that it would appear so. Women come in a range of bodyshapes. To name a few: 'apple', 'pear' and 'busty' (men's physiques are less diverse). Among slimmer women these various types are often evident, but it is in the plus-size cohort that they become really exaggerated. Put simply, each female body stores its weight in a particular pattern (it's fairly rare to have it spread evenly all over), meaning that, as a woman puts on weight, whichever part of her physique was comparatively large to begin with, continues to grow, while other areas become proportionally smaller, exaggerating the shape. Therefore, the larger a women becomes, the more likely she is not able to squeeze into apparel that is made for her size, but not her shape.
The fashion industry has largely soldiered on trying to ignore this inconvenient fact. Sending out apparel in standard grading and sizing to a market that is anything but standard is like throwing mud against a wall and hoping it will stick. The resultant slurry of returns is clogging up the industry.
The chronic fit problem particularly plagues e-commerce, because it doesn't presently offer consumers the opportunity to try garments on prior to buying them. This has meant the industry has been forced to ignore designer, tailored, fashion-forward and expensive clothing, or anything else that relies on a very specific fit, which would probably stand no more than a one-in-six chance of hitting the mark. Faced with the tidal wave of returns, most of this sector has had to wriggle its way right down to the bottom of the price, variety and quality scale, so much of the offer comprises 'easy-fit', cheaper, predictable garments.
The result of the fit problem spreads out like an oil spill, polluting the whole scene: the plus-size fashion industry's margins are damaged, it's even more ecologically unsustainable than the rest of the fashion industry, lacking in maturity, lacklustre and suffering from galloping customer dissatisfaction.

Yet those with imagination look at a stunted industry and see only a huge, exciting opportunity, with billions just waiting to be disgorged by digital disruption. Apparel businesses are still using sizing systems that were developed for last century's technology. With present-day advancements, so-called online 'fit tools' will soon be capable of identifying a consumer's individual bodyshape and match it with the corresponding apparel. It's like California just before the first prospector struck gold.
A radical re-think
The requisite garments are not yet in fashion's inventory: clothing will have to be graded specifically for an individual's body shape, dictated by a feedback loop of data gleaned from a large enough sample of consumers just like her, using those same fit tools. Apparel will be manufactured in a series of differing, niche shapes (mass, rather than individual customisation) in shorter runs using advanced digital systems at every stage.
The sizing system also needs a radical re-think; it has to be far more comprehensive to take into account the wide range of consumers' diverse metrics. The consumer will be largely unaware of her new clothing size, which will be applied to her automatically using AI technology working intuitively, immediately, confidentially and non-intrusively. All she will know is that she is ordering a piece of clothing that will fit her.
If this sounds seductively easy, it shouldn't: is very complicated, and as with all such situations the trick will be to simplify it as much as possible from the start. The industry will initially use judgement and subtle customer knowledge to cluster the metrics into meaningful groups. There will be a trial and error period at the beginning where the data (which has never been so widely mined for this cohort, or any other) is gathered and analysed. This process has the added complication that a woman's bodyshape dictates more than just the metrics of her apparel; working along with her own taste, it has fit and style preference implications, too. However, understanding these aspects just represents yet another way of better serving the consumer.
And this is just the beginning. The bodyshape data will ultimately be used to create better-fitting apparel for people in all sizes and shapes (the slimmer cohort will also end-up getting a better fit), and achieve a more equal, diverse clothing offer to everyone, whether they are minority groups, fitness junkies, disabled people or have otherwise outlier bodyshapes. It will allow the development of curated apparel offers, enabling brands to benefit from increased sell-through, and individual customisation for specific purposes (say, bridal wear, occasional or, indeed, that smart work suiting). It will slash fashion's shameful carbon footprint and boost the bottom line. It will market all aspects of the fashion industry (from top luxe at one end, to budget fast fashion at the other, and everything in between) to the neglected half of the female population. This will open up billions of dollars in increased commerce.
The first step is the development of the fit tools and associated input technology (like handheld scanning, for example, as relying on customers' willingness and ability to input their own measurements will not be scalable). It will not be an immediate process, and the fashion and tech industries have to come together to dig-in for a long haul, being prepared to invest time as well as resources. Researching, acquiring, partnering and developing these advances should be the number-one priority for those fashion brands that do not want to be left behind by the next great leap forward in digital technology.

The black hole at the heart of plus-size fashion
I learned at school that the all-powerful law of 'supply and demand' meant that where there was consumer desire for something, a market would emerge to satisfy it. Yet, on the surface at least, this law seems to mean nothing in the business in which I have spent most of my professional life... plus-size fashion. To this day, over a half of all women in the US are clothed in dress size 14 or over, yet this sector accounts for less than a fifth of women's apparel sold yearly, and the UK fares no better.Why should this be? Social media is pretty clear that it's all about prejudice. The fashion industry 'hates' bigger people, and refuses to produce exciting enough clothing for them to want to buy. However, nothing happens without a reason and that particular one simply doesn't hold water.
I'm not going to deal with sizeism. I'm here to talk from a business point of view, and it's clear that, where a product is likely to make money, commerce is only too willing to supply that product. Corporate directors in any industry do not choose to lose billions of dollars simply to indulge their own peccadilloes, even supposing they had any.
Let's go back to the pre-internet era, where the problem was already manifested. Back in the days where the consumer visited a bricks-and-mortar store and purchased her fashion after having checked the fit in a changing room, things were already far from peachy in the plus-size market. The level of customer satisfaction, the maturity of the market and the fulfilment of financial potential in this sector have always been extremely poor.
The poison in the bloodstream of the plus-size industry was a fit problem. All women of every size, from the tiniest to the very largest enjoy one of a number of diverse body shapes, such as 'hourglass', 'busty', 'pear-shaped', etc. This is because women have a number of differing areas of the body on which they store fat. As we grow larger, women add their excess body mass mainly on to these discrete areas, rather than evenly all over (or just around the middle, like most men). This means that women's differing body shapes become more exaggerated the further up the size range they go. Women of the same overall dress size can have a 20cm or more difference in any number of their measurements, meaning that two women of exactly the same dress size may simply find it impossible to fit into the same clothes. Plus-size women are, therefore, very difficult and complex to fit.
This complexity has created a cascade of negative effects that have always affected this market. Brands tried to create fits that they believed were likely to suit most people (just as they do in the 'straight' size ranges), by crunching the statistics into one 'average' grading. Even in 'mainstream' sizes it doesn't work brilliantly, but in the plus market, it fails because the resulting fit (the 'well-proportioned' body shape) counts for only about 10% of the population.
When plus-size designs requiring 'specific fits' (like tailored workwear suiting, for example) were produced using this formula, they therefore only fitted a small proportion of customers, creating very disappointing sell-throughs. The industry's response of providing 'non-specific' fits a baggy, stretchy, shapeless offer meant that although the clothing could actually fit on to their customers, it disappointed and infuriated them, causing them to refuse as anyone would to spend big on goods they found uninspiring.
Because the spend was poor, the industry assumed that the plus-size consumer was 'cheap', and reacted with a cut-price offer. The fabric and workmanship became low-cost, which minimised choice in the sector. Instead of having a range of price-points to match the 'straight' brands on the high street, plus-size apparel was relegated to one offer... that of the lowest price.
When brands tried to introduce fashion-forward looks, the fit for this type of apparel, again, needed to be specific, and, worse, the style had to be matched up to the correct body shape in order to look flattering, regardless of fit. When the bewildered consumers weren't physically able to buy into this enhanced design level, the industry concluded that larger women 'simply weren't fashionable'. This again affected the offer, with the choice of styles available to this cohort being limited largely to the predictable, repetitive, banal and mediocre.
At every point, new, good quality, stylish, exciting, fashionable looks for the plus-size market hit a brick wall... and it was always the same wall: fit. Unlike the sages of social media, I don't blame the industry for a failure in trying. In the pre-information age, they were at a loss as to know why nothing was working. Women went into the changing room with clothes, and came out without buying. On the high street, the plus-size fashion business was stalled and disproportionately small.
Roll forward into the Internet age, and broadly we are still in the same situation. Brands continually make attempts to widen this sector with diverse looks, price points, fits, quality and utility, but again these get sucked into a black hole. This time we can actually see that the consumer is interested in what's on offer, as plus-size fashion is being bought in ever-increasing quantities and social media is alive to the excitement caused with the new directional fashion-forward looks. However, the sector is suffering from truly horrendous levels of product returns almost three out of every four plus-size items of apparel are presently being sent back. One thing has changed, however. In the information age, the answer as to why this is happening is now coming through loud and clear: overwhelmingly, these items are being returned due to poor fit.
Pre-ecommerce, it wouldn't have really mattered if we had found out that we needed to provide a wider range of gradings for this sector: stores could hardly have carried all that extra inventory, nor trained enough staff to target these diverse products and consumers correctly. But that was then, and this is now.
With the latest methods, we will have the ability to study our customers in huge numbers, clustering the data into body types and creating gradings that match each group of statistics. Larger brands will easily have enough capacity to create collections that are suitable for each shape both in fit and style. These different collections will all overlap in design with basic items, diverging only where the looks become best suited to one specific body shape.
When selling, we will be able to take note of an individual's measurements so as to assign them a 'fit ID' their body shape, height, measurements and fit preference and supply them with the garment that will fit them. This must be done automatically. Customers will quite naturally browse the collections specifically created for them.
Smaller brands will create looks for their particular 'muse': as an exaggeration of what they already do, but with greatly enhanced two-way fit knowledge and communication. These brands, removed from the largely unsuccessful and damaging attempts to be 'everything to everybody' will have greatly enhanced profitability and opportunity for expansion.
To paraphrase George Santayana, "Those who cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat it". We have the ability to learn from what has previously damaged the plus-size fashion industry, and the technology and capability to create a new response to this incredibly exciting, growing and lucrative market.
So what's the real problem distorting the supply/demand process in the plus-size apparel industry? What is causing the horrendous returns problem that afflicts this sector? Is there some mysterious black hole at the centre of this market? And, most importantly, is it something that can be solved? Do we now have an opportunity to create a new plus-size industry that is far more fit for purpose?
Let's go back to the pre-internet era, where the problem was already manifested. Back in the days where the consumer visited a bricks-and-mortar store and purchased her fashion after having checked the fit in a changing room, things were already far from peachy in the plus-size market. The level of customer satisfaction, the maturity of the market and the fulfilment of financial potential in this sector have always been extremely poor.
The poison in the bloodstream of the plus-size industry was a fit problem. All women of every size, from the tiniest to the very largest enjoy one of a number of diverse body shapes, such as 'hourglass', 'busty', 'pear-shaped', etc. This is because women have a number of differing areas of the body on which they store fat. As we grow larger, women add their excess body mass mainly on to these discrete areas, rather than evenly all over (or just around the middle, like most men). This means that women's differing body shapes become more exaggerated the further up the size range they go. Women of the same overall dress size can have a 20cm or more difference in any number of their measurements, meaning that two women of exactly the same dress size may simply find it impossible to fit into the same clothes. Plus-size women are, therefore, very difficult and complex to fit.
This complexity has created a cascade of negative effects that have always affected this market. Brands tried to create fits that they believed were likely to suit most people (just as they do in the 'straight' size ranges), by crunching the statistics into one 'average' grading. Even in 'mainstream' sizes it doesn't work brilliantly, but in the plus market, it fails because the resulting fit (the 'well-proportioned' body shape) counts for only about 10% of the population.
When plus-size designs requiring 'specific fits' (like tailored workwear suiting, for example) were produced using this formula, they therefore only fitted a small proportion of customers, creating very disappointing sell-throughs. The industry's response of providing 'non-specific' fits a baggy, stretchy, shapeless offer meant that although the clothing could actually fit on to their customers, it disappointed and infuriated them, causing them to refuse as anyone would to spend big on goods they found uninspiring.
Because the spend was poor, the industry assumed that the plus-size consumer was 'cheap', and reacted with a cut-price offer. The fabric and workmanship became low-cost, which minimised choice in the sector. Instead of having a range of price-points to match the 'straight' brands on the high street, plus-size apparel was relegated to one offer... that of the lowest price.
When brands tried to introduce fashion-forward looks, the fit for this type of apparel, again, needed to be specific, and, worse, the style had to be matched up to the correct body shape in order to look flattering, regardless of fit. When the bewildered consumers weren't physically able to buy into this enhanced design level, the industry concluded that larger women 'simply weren't fashionable'. This again affected the offer, with the choice of styles available to this cohort being limited largely to the predictable, repetitive, banal and mediocre.
At every point, new, good quality, stylish, exciting, fashionable looks for the plus-size market hit a brick wall... and it was always the same wall: fit. Unlike the sages of social media, I don't blame the industry for a failure in trying. In the pre-information age, they were at a loss as to know why nothing was working. Women went into the changing room with clothes, and came out without buying. On the high street, the plus-size fashion business was stalled and disproportionately small.
Plus-size women, already at a great disadvantage in society, were forced to wear cheap, shapeless, sexless, frumpy garments, reinforcing stereotypes and damaging self-esteem, careers and relationships. Fashion matters, and these women were being underserved.
Roll forward into the Internet age, and broadly we are still in the same situation. Brands continually make attempts to widen this sector with diverse looks, price points, fits, quality and utility, but again these get sucked into a black hole. This time we can actually see that the consumer is interested in what's on offer, as plus-size fashion is being bought in ever-increasing quantities and social media is alive to the excitement caused with the new directional fashion-forward looks. However, the sector is suffering from truly horrendous levels of product returns almost three out of every four plus-size items of apparel are presently being sent back. One thing has changed, however. In the information age, the answer as to why this is happening is now coming through loud and clear: overwhelmingly, these items are being returned due to poor fit.
Pre-ecommerce, it wouldn't have really mattered if we had found out that we needed to provide a wider range of gradings for this sector: stores could hardly have carried all that extra inventory, nor trained enough staff to target these diverse products and consumers correctly. But that was then, and this is now.
Where the legacy is poor, it is our responsibility and opportunity to build a completely new system, throwing out the bugs as we go along.
With the latest methods, we will have the ability to study our customers in huge numbers, clustering the data into body types and creating gradings that match each group of statistics. Larger brands will easily have enough capacity to create collections that are suitable for each shape both in fit and style. These different collections will all overlap in design with basic items, diverging only where the looks become best suited to one specific body shape.
When selling, we will be able to take note of an individual's measurements so as to assign them a 'fit ID' their body shape, height, measurements and fit preference and supply them with the garment that will fit them. This must be done automatically. Customers will quite naturally browse the collections specifically created for them.
Smaller brands will create looks for their particular 'muse': as an exaggeration of what they already do, but with greatly enhanced two-way fit knowledge and communication. These brands, removed from the largely unsuccessful and damaging attempts to be 'everything to everybody' will have greatly enhanced profitability and opportunity for expansion.
To paraphrase George Santayana, "Those who cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat it". We have the ability to learn from what has previously damaged the plus-size fashion industry, and the technology and capability to create a new response to this incredibly exciting, growing and lucrative market.
There is absolutely no reason why plus-size womenswear cannot be every bit as exciting, fashion-forward, inspiring and lucrative as 'mainstream' fashion.

Fashion's 'mind-blowing' fact
The good news for fashion e-commerce is that customers are choosing to purchase apparel online in ever-growing quantities; the bad news is that some 40% of that is being returned.It's now common knowledge that these product returns create a matrix of detrimental effects on every element of the fashion industry. The loss of sales, customer dissatisfaction, forfeiture of loyalty, damage to stock, administrative/distribution/picking and re-stocking expenses, along with and ecological harm, create a powerful engine for change.
We know that around 70% of customers report 'poor fit' as their reason for returning apparel, and the industry is slowly edging towards developing the kind of intelligent solutions that are needed to drill down to the root causes of this fit problem. The beginning of this process is to take a long, hard look at our customers.
How, exactly, do we get to see our customers?
The solution still favoured by many brands is to simply ask consumers to choose the clothing size they wish to purchase, without any real inquiry as to their measurements. This is a legacy from bricks-and-mortar stores, where this system worked adequately only then it was supported by the ability of the consumer to test personally the fit of each item in the changing room. Online, however, size self-reporting has proved too blunt a tool to provide acceptable results.
Many online retailers have therefore been forced to seek out some physical information about their customers, asking them to input body measurements, weight, height, and, occasionally, bra size and/or body shape. However, even when returns data is added into the mix, most of these systems have not been supported by sophisticated enough tech, and they must take their share of the blame for the level of product returns that we see today.
Luckily, the cavalry, in the shape of clever tech people, are busily doing what they do best: developing technological solutions. At present there are scanning devices, smart apparel, measurements from photographs and mobile phone apps undergoing rapid development, so very soon we should start to be able to get a much clearer idea of the size and shape of our customers. It's clear that the tech will not cease development until a thorough, accurate, continuous, 'sub-conscious' system of gathering consumer body metrics is perfected. This omnipotent tech may take some time to arrive, but we had better not sit around waiting for it: we urgently need to develop interim techniques that will help us do as much of the heavy lifting as we can. Any system that is even marginally more effective than what we have now is going to diminish the numbers of returns, which is enough of a reason to adopt it. However, a more vital motive will prove to be the ability to begin participating in the industry transformation that will advance with every fresh piece of customer data gained.
Will fashion customers willingly give up personal information?
The answer to this is a resounding yes... and also a frustrating no. 78% of customers reported being willing to share body metrics in exchange for a better fit. Yet, like everything else to do with human beings, the answer is more complex than at first view.
Consumers can and do contaminate their own information every time they come into contact with it.
If body measurements are continuously being requested (or fed back), a number of detrimental effects will be seen. Some customers will balk at even knowing accurate personal statistics ("The last time I measured myself was when I was at my slimmest: I really don't want to know how my waist compares now"), some will disagree with feedback from automated measuring systems ("How much? There's something wrong with this set up!"), and others will be deterred from purchase ("When I find that I've put on weight, I find that I've been put off buying anything"). These, and many other emotional reactions to sizing, add up to a situation where input is often out-dated, inaccurate, or, even worse, the very act of obtaining the latest data deters or upsets the consumer to the extent that it has a detrimental effect on sales.
We will solve this conundrum only by providing an automatic apparel fitting service designed to keep conscious customer involvement to a minimum. As usual, we will have to get smart.
"It'll blow their minds"
When considering the effects of new advances, many people focus on the tech itself in this case, assuming that once we have the body metrics of our fashion consumers, this information will be slotted into the sales process at the point of sale. In other words, the stock sits in the warehouse the consumer at his or her screen, and the tech simply pairs up the matching size.
This, although true as far as it goes, understates the case a thousand fold, because, like all great technological advances, it is the way tech interacts with society that brings about the most significant disruption often in the most unforeseeable ways. In this case, we will see the effects on the fashion industry of a tidal wave of information.
When talking to a friend (a fellow customer expert), I asked him how he thought the fashion industry would react once it gets hold, for the very first time, of all the body metrics of its consumers (and particularly those of the ever-growing plus-size section of the population). He instantly said "It'll blow their minds". I agree.
It is only once we have seen in detail the huge diversity between the body shapes, sizes, heights and weights of our population that we will begin to have a true picture of what we are up against. The fact is that we have never produced apparel that actually reflects the sizes and shapes of our population far from it.
The true reason for a return may not be that an individual is being supplied with the wrong item of stock with the right piece having remained at the depot. It is actually highly likely that the brand has not manufactured any items that will adequately fit this person and many others because their choice of gradings is inadequate. The information will tell the company that there is no 'right piece' for this individual not even close. And this is going to be happening millions of times across the industry. The brands that find this out are going to have to think about what, if anything, they are going to do about the river of gold of potential business that they are presently losing out on.
If we are going to offer the correct apparel to our consumers, we will need to redesign every size, introduce every grading, redefine our offer and our entire tech root and branch. We will have to learn to think completely differently about the way we fit people into apparel, and how we create clothing fit for people.
Those fashion brands that are swift to realise the enormity of the opportunity gained by this enhanced knowledge are going to be at such competitive advantage that they will sweep all before them. In turn, tech companies that win the race to develop the technology driving this disruption are going to become the behemoths of commerce.
As my friend concluded, "It's a great time to be alive".

'Sizing'? control
Have you ever tried to tell someone what clothing size they are? Did you attempt it with a friend or family member? How about a complete stranger? If you really did that, how did it go for you?Informing someone what their dimensions are is a very difficult thing to do and it's all the more sensitive if that person already has a strong idea what size they are; particularly if their idea is wrong.
With advances in fashion e-commerce fitting technology, we will soon be able to identify the measurements of consumers using an array of clever devices from body scanning pods, apps that work on mobile phones, interactive changing room mirrors, and everything else that those clever tech people can come up with.
These advances matter, because ever since fashion started to be sold online, we have been seeing an enormous proportion of stock returns. It's fashion's dirty little secret (although not so little and not so secret these days) that many online brands see 25% stock returns, and this can grow to a whopping 75% when we look at the ever-growing plus-size market, where body shapes are more variable. The vast majority of these returns are put down to poor sizing: customers are complaining that we are distributing apparel that does not fit them, and they are sending it back in huge quantities.
Quite apart from the expense and ecological waste concerned, every garment return represents a disappointed customer, which can damage loyalty to a company; 70% of purchasers say that they will never revisit a brand again if their first buy turns out to be a dud. That's quite a loss of trade.
Surely the new tech is going to be a magic bullet that will deal with the difficult subject of finding clothing that is comfortable for our population? We have the means of discovering what size each individual is, and all we have to do is to tell them. The solution is the technology, pure and simple. However, as Oscar Wilde said: 'The truth is rarely pure and never simple '.
There are very many issues thrown up by the sizing tech, but in this piece I am going to deal with just one of them: the concept of size disclosure.
People don't usually have any emotion invested in the size of things. Tell a man the size of his windows, the length of his street the distance to the moon he may not always agree, but there is no passion involved. It's unlikely that he will storm off, refusing ever to return, because he doesn't see eye-to-eye with your estimation of the length of his car. However, we all have an emotional relationship with our bodies. Anyone who takes it upon himself to bustle up and inform us of our clothing size is likely to find that we (or at least some of us) really don't appreciate it.
Many tech specialists I know doubt whether there is any problem disclosing measurements and sizes to a consumer. After all, the privacy of a tablet, laptop or smartphone is a kind of confessional: no one else need ever know. So what's the big difficulty with stumping up the numbers?
Sizing disclosure, even if it is performed in confidence, presents a problem. I will give an example of what I mean. A man I know, let's call him Neville, is a useful case study. When asked to supply his waist measurement to his doctor, he unhesitatingly replied that it was 38" (Neville has for years worn a 38" trouser). When it was pointed out to him that the medic needed his actual waist measurement, Neville reacted with dismay. He had to face up to something he had been dodging for years the prospect of a measuring tape wrapped round his middle. The result that his waist measurement was nearer 44" was even worse than he feared.
Poor Neville was having a bad day: he started that morning as a man who was a size 38" waist, and which had been unchanged for years. By the afternoon he was an overweight guy whose waist had grown by 6". It was something that he had not been mentally prepared for, and the fact that it was a secret between him and his doctor was irrelevant... he now knew something that he could never 'un-know'. Luckily, he had not planned to go clothes shopping that day, because had that been his intention he would have been far too upset to do so.
But this problem is not restricted to men. Women are also problematical when it comes to size disclosure. Many take on their dress size as a vital part of their identity, and only shop in brands where their mental size matches up with what is written on the label. There will be a substantial proportion of these women who will not wish even to visit a website that informs them that they are a size they do not wish to be associated with. Accuracy be damned; they, too, would rather not know.
Others will listen to the retailer's suggestions, then simply ignore the information and go ahead with ordering the size that they intended to all along the size that felt like 'them'. When it arrives and doesn't fit, they reason that it's the brand's fault.
But arguably, 'facing up' to one's clothing size can also be troublesome. Some vulnerable groups can become obsessed with their weight, continually monitoring, and riding an emotional rollercoaster as it naturally varies over time. Eating disorders, bullying, depression, or worse, can be exacerbated with too much information and disclosure about sizes and measurements.
So, is the new sizing technology going to be a retrograde step for our consumers? Not at all: this is going to be the tech that will set us free. We just have to stop being so obsessed with clothing size.
From an apparel commerce point of view, there is only one reason for a person to have to know their measurements, or indeed dress size: in order to be able to input them into our systems so that they can buy the correct clothing. Why don't we just cut out the middleman so that the consumer does not need to do anything at all?
In the future, we will think in terms of fit and forget about clothing sizes altogether. We will be scanned and automatically fitted for apparel, according to the customer's individual preferences which are just as important as those pesky measurements. Better still, those that provide the clothing will get a precise picture of the body shapes of fashion consumers, all the better to create apparel graded perfectly to fit today's diverse population.
It's going to happen; it's now up to the go-ahead brands to 'size the day '.

Fitting into e-commerce
I've spent most of the past 30 years working in independent large-size womenswear, and I had my own plus-size retail business for 22 years. To achieve a perfect result each time we fitted every one of our customers, altering more than half of all the fashion we sold. So I have undertaken many thousands of fittings, gathering so many measurements that it's hard to estimate their number.During these fittings there was a friendly, fun atmosphere; it was cool, comfortable and private. We had a laugh, but when customers knew that I was trying to perfect their clothes, they realised that this was a serious business.
Our customers were usually stunned by the results of having clothing specially tailored, and many of them wrote to us in gratitude: Emma Plus testimonials.
I love accuracy and fit, but I have no respect for the measurements and sizes that can cause stress. I don't care what size a person takes, and I am passionately against any kind of sizeist hierarchy. Every generation has its own preferred fit: today's young girls have their own style, and it was our job to 'get' people.
The good news is that it will soon be possible to accommodate women of every size from 'mainstream' to plus-size in e-commerce, with fashion that fits just as beautifully as I was able to achieve in a bricks-and-mortar store. In the meantime, while we are perfecting the AI fitting that will give us the fashion we deserve, in the styles and fits that suit our needs, I may be coming to somewhere near you.
I am part of a team tasked with finding out the sizes and shapes of plus-size womenswear customers. So, should our paths cross, if you are a larger woman, I may ask you if I can record some of your measurements.
I promise that it will be a perfectly pleasant experience, that it will be over in a jiffy, and that we will have a bit of a laugh even though it's a serious matter. We have a job to do to there are few things more serious than the business of getting gorgeous clothes for ourselves. I'm hoping that you will help.
I love accuracy and fit, but I have no respect for the measurements and sizes that can cause stress. I don't care what size a person takes, and I am passionately against any kind of sizeist hierarchy. Every generation has its own preferred fit: today's young girls have their own style, and it was our job to 'get' people.
Now I have moved into a new exciting arena that of e-commerce fitting. This is something that someone like me... an old timer who has had decades of hands-on experience of larger bodies... needs to embrace to help solve the dreadful fit problems that have plagued this young branch of the fashion industry. It's my opportunity to take the inequality, embarrassment, inconvenience, waste, frustration, disappointment, irritation and expense of buying plus-size clothing online and do my bit to help solve these problems, once and for all.
The good news is that it will soon be possible to accommodate women of every size from 'mainstream' to plus-size in e-commerce, with fashion that fits just as beautifully as I was able to achieve in a bricks-and-mortar store. In the meantime, while we are perfecting the AI fitting that will give us the fashion we deserve, in the styles and fits that suit our needs, I may be coming to somewhere near you.
I am part of a team tasked with finding out the sizes and shapes of plus-size womenswear customers. So, should our paths cross, if you are a larger woman, I may ask you if I can record some of your measurements.
I promise that it will be a perfectly pleasant experience, that it will be over in a jiffy, and that we will have a bit of a laugh even though it's a serious matter. We have a job to do to there are few things more serious than the business of getting gorgeous clothes for ourselves. I'm hoping that you will help.