Natalie Craig is a 24-year-old Chicago fashion blogger who says she hopes to inspire readers to “own” their look and feel confident.
Her relationship with the act of shopping is a more complicated.
Craig, who considers herself plus size, said brands want to court plus-size shoppers, but the success of their efforts varies widely. And in-store choices remain sparse.
“There are just so few options,” said Craig, whose blog is called Natalie in the City.“At the end of the day, there are still times I feel there are no clothes for me.”
The U.S. market for plus-size apparel is growing, with sales hitting $20.4 billion in the year ending in February 2016, up 3 percent from the year before, according to the NPD Group research firm.
Interest in the category is growing, particularly quickly among teens and younger women, said Marshal Cohen, NPD’s fashion industry analyst. About a third of 13- to 17-year-old girls said they considered buying plus-size clothing in 2015, up from 19 percent in 2012.
Americans of all ages tend to be heavier than in prior years, but Cohen chalks the uptick in teens’ interest in the category to the fact that more brands are starting to sell plus-size clothes younger shoppers actually want to wear.
“Kids had to get creative before with the limited product that was available, which was stifling the true potential for growth,” he said.
The past few years have seen steady growth in the range of plus-size options.
Online shops like ModCloth, Asos.com, Carmakoma and ELOQUII aren’t pitched to teens, but make Teen Vogue roundups of brands that are fashionable, not frumpy.
ELOQUII, a size-14-to-28 fast-fashion e-commerce company, was initially owned but then shut down, by The Limited. It relaunched as a stand-alone business in 2014.
ELOQUII announced raising $15 million in funding this month and said revenue grew 165 percent in 2015.
Fast-fashion retailers popular with teens also have launched or expanded their plus-size lines.
In January, Forever 21’s extended-sizes line, Forever 21 Plus, introduced activewear with advertisements featuring plus-size model Ashley Graham.
Teen-friendly brand Charlotte Russe added a plus-size line in 2015.
In 2012, H&M rebranded its plus-size collections — previously known in-store as “Big is Beautiful” — as H&M+, “meaning fashion will always come before size at H&M,” the company said on its website.
Not to be left behind, retail giant Target last year launched plus-size line Ava &Viv.
Craig said that when she was younger, there didn’t seem to be any trendy plus-size stores.
She was 19 when Forever 21 Plus debuted and at first it was “very ‘mom,’” she said, adding that it’s since gotten considerably hipper.
But even though there are trendier choices, brands have been slower to put them in stores, said Amanda Stilwell, who blogs about plus-size fashion at In the Thick of It.
During the recession, as consumers cut back, many retailers also cut back on their range of products, particularly when it came to teens with less disposable income, Cohen said.
Stilwell, 36, who also lives in Chicago, said it felt “like a big insult” when companies that experimented with stocking plus sizes moved them back online or shrunk selection to a rack or two in the back of the store.
Both Stilwell and Craig imagine an ideal shopping experience that allows them to walk into any store and find the same apparel in their size as in sizes 0 to 4 — and not , as Craig said, in a “dimly lit, undermarketed corner.”
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