“I had nowhere to shop. I had always been able to go to any store and get what I wanted,” 30-year-old plus size model Nikeya Young says over a bowl of cereal, recalling her drastic weight gain in college.
“Getting comfortable with my new body was very weird at first because I had never been ‘plus size’. But I had to look in the mirror and say that I like what I see right now and just have a Jennifer Hudson ‘You’re Gonna Love Me’ attitude,” she says with a laugh.
The plus-sized fashion market is one of the fastest growing in apparel, according to the Weight-Control Information Network. Designers like Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld are starting to catch on to the trend by incorporating plus lines into their collections and featuring plus sized models on their runways.
All of the sudden, it’s okay to be “fat” in fashion–even when “fat” is defined as anyone who’s a size 10 and up, which is the majority of women period. But is this a true embrace or is it just for good publicity?
Boutique owner and chief designer of Courbes Sera, Sara Simmons, claims the latter. She especially admonishes Lagerfeld’s sudden change of tune after making comments saying “no one wants to look at curvy women” then turning around and shooting V magazine’s “Size Issue”.
Simmons, 30, carries sizes 12-28 in her boutique and cites old Hollywood glamour and classic Hollywood films as sources of inspiration for the clothes she makes.
“For me, it’s about providing the confidence to the women who may not necessarily have the confidence to look sexy,” she says. “Sometimes feeling beautiful starts on the outside. It’s not always about the facade of what fashion is. It can be a very emotional thing.”
Being considered “plus sized” herself, Simmons says she is her “own clientele” making garments of the finest materials and fabrics, including silk jersey, wool and silk chiffon. Prices for her clothing ranges from about $100 to $500, her collections consisting mostly of bright, bold yellow and blue dresses, sharp, sophisticated women’s suits, and sexy, sleek wide-legged pants.
Simmons’s boutique “Courbes Sera”, which translates to “curves will be”, is one of the few plus sized boutiques in Chicago. Simmons says that the plus size community in Chicago isn’t very large, but it’s getting there.
“The recession is making retailers accept the plus sized woman,” Young says. “But we’ve always been here. It’s not like we just popped up during the recession.”
And what she’s saying is true. Almost half of American women wear a size 12 or greater, according to the Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor. Retailers, advertisers and society alike has no choice but to start taking notice.
“Women are getting fed up,” Simmons says. “They want to be recognized. They want something stylish and they’re starting to speak up and say ‘notice me!’, ‘notice us!’. We’re here and we have money. We want to buy…but you’re not giving us anything to buy.”