Dear Budget Fashionista,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s happening to large size fashion? It\u2019s becoming harder and harder to find \u201cnice\u201d brands of large size clothes, particularly at a bargain. Is this a trend? The new, West Coast \u201cflagship\u201d Bloomingdale\u2019s<\/a> opened in downtown San Francisco with NO women sizes above 14! And the 14s are few and far between. What\u2019s the rationale?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Answer:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The shrinking size of plus size departments at your favorite stores has to do both with money and the \u201cimage\u201d the store is trying to project. I\u2019ve been told by \u201cplus size experts\u201d that, and I quote, \u201cplus size women don\u2019t like to spend any money on their clothes.\u201d Whether this is true or not is debatable, but what I do know is that many stores want to compete for the younger audience that worships starving celebs like Nicole Ritchie and feel that having stylish plus size collections would deter this customer from shopping at the store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, many stores have not only removed or limited their plus size sections, but also their petite and Misses sections as well. Bloomingdales’ flagship store in Manhattan, recently consolidated it\u2019s contemporary (cheaper) misses collection to one floor- when it used to be spread among two and increased the size of it\u2019s YES collection focusing on teens<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another important thing to remember is that lines rarely diffuse down. This means lines rarely start at the low-priced, budget level and then try to do a higher end line. Think of the most successful, budget friendly designer lines (Isaac Mizrahi at Target, H&M designers collections, Go International). All of them started off as very pricey high end collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue is, according to my friends in the fashion business<\/a>, that in order to have the fabulous budget plus size discount collections, you have to first support the higher end collections. These friends have a whole list of plus size lines that failed because plus size fashionistas didn\u2019t go and buy them. For example, DKNY had a wonderful plus size line that was carried at Bloomingdales and Saks, that no longer exists for many reasons, one being that it didn\u2019t sell until it was on sale. Now, I think this is bit one sided because I also know that the stores put $0 marketing dollars behind their plus size departments (like they do their petite departments).<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what does this mean for the bargain plus size<\/a> fashionista? Well…if department stores aren\u2019t buying the collections (for whatever reason), then there\u2019s no overstock or leftover pieces from a season to put on sale\/clearance, and no deals to get. Which is sad because there are some truly fabulous, albeit expensive, plus size designers out there like Monifc, Elena Miro, and Kiyonna