Ann Taylor Drops Size 16s
They keep throwing the numbers around–the average woman, according to any number of sources from any number of surveys, is anywhere from a size 12 to a size 14 or 16 and up. They keep saying that plus-size fashion is the most under-represented and under-served segment of the retail market. They keep saying that plus-size women deserve a rainbow of clothing options and sizes.
And you know, I don’t know much about fashion, or fashion retailing, or retailing in general, but that sounds pretty reasonable to me. Rational, well-considered, right. And yet, somehow, all that wisdom and rationality never seems to translate into action, and retailers–Old Navy in particular comes to mind–keep dropping their larger sizes or shuffling them off to the internet. Ann Taylor’s the newest of the bunch. They’re dropping their size 16s from all their retail stores, though they’ll still offer them on the internet.
When stores do this, their rationale always seems to be that the demand isn’t there for plus-size clothing (ha! ha!), and that women aren’t buying them (ha!). But women aren’t buying much in the way of Ann Taylor anyway–sales have been declining, and they reported some spectacular losses last year. Somehow, though, I don’t think dropping their larger sizes is really going to turn their business around–and it’s never occurred to them, apparently, that it might hurt them even more.
Posted by jenfu
Not exactly my style, but it still pisses me off. I usually wear a 16, and it’s annoying enough when I’m in the Gap and the 16s are a wee tad tight, but I can’t try on an 18 because 18 and 20 are online only (why do 2 sizes make a huge -ha- difference? You can’t just stock them? SRSLY?)
Of course we won’t buy them if they aren’t available! And no, I don’t want to special order them. Especially if you’re going to make it a massive hassle to return them when they don’t fit right.
Honestly, if we have to drop sizes (and I don’t think we should – everyone needs/deserves clothes that fit), the smallest ones are always what’s left over – why not drop 0s? If the 14/16s are gone and the 0/2s are left, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon (ha) to say which ones aren’t selling. But I’ll re-emphasize to discourage flaming – we shouldn’t drop *any* sizes. We should, actually, add more.
Oh Liza, EXACTLY!!!!!! EVERY time there’s a sale, the only sizes left are the 0, 2, S, XS, etc.
With business practices like this, these stores DESERVE to go out of business!
(BTW, is it just me, or has the quality of denim at The Gap gone WAAAAY down, while prices have gone up?)
Exactly! even at stores like Ross and TJ Maxx, the XS and S section is huge and there may be 20 items in XL. No one is buying the super small sizes so why aren’t they as hard to find as 16’s?
I think the problem that stores like Old Navy had with plus sizes is that they didn’t have them in every store, if they did, they hid them way in the back, and the selection was never as large or as attractive as the straight sizes. So no wonder the sales weren’t high.
When I shop with friends and go into stores that carry sizes on the upper end of the straight sizes (when I was small enough to fit in those sizes), they were never proportioned right. They took the size 4 and scaled it up, never accounting for hips, tummies, boobs, etc. So, I, again, no wonder they don’t sell much in that range.
Until manufacturers start making clothes that are actually sized to fit women in those ranges, and offering the same selection as smaller sizes, I don’t see how their sales are going to change.
I’d much rather go to Lane Bryant where at least I know that some things will fit properly.
I have similar unhappiness with Sears/Lands End. They do not stock any plus sizes for Lands End in the Sears stores and when I inquired about the practice, I was told, “Well, you can feel the fabric and then I can help you order your size online.” Gee, I don’t feel marginalized by this policy.
What’s it going to take for retailers to stop this? It pisses me off! Why do they treat us like second class citizens? (Because that’s what they think of us?)
This makes me want to start my own clothing line/store even MORE.
I’m a little confused. Ann Taylor has always gone up to a size 18 – I guess they’re dropping both? Just curious about a source. I’m bummed, because as an in-betweenie I’ve always liked them, but I’m a 14 teetering on the edge of 16.
I…they…but—ARRRRGH. *industrial eyeroll followed by headdesk*
(please excuse/forgive my lack of coherence–I decided to de-lurk but the article depleted my ability to form complete sentences. I’ll do better next go round, I swear!)
(BTW, is it just me, or has the quality of denim at The Gap gone WAAAAY down, while prices have gone up?)
Um, the quality of denim IN EVERY STORE has gone way down, even among those forever-brands like Levis. I’m so tired of spending >$100 on jeans. Gimme an effing break, people. Last summer I had the pocket rip IN THE FABRIC of a brand-new pair of jeans – with brand new denim, that should be nigh to impossible.
sizzle, I have the exact same reaction.
I think they must not make as much money on the plus sized stuff or otherwise why would they drop it?
Hmm… While i agree that larger sizes should be available in stores, I don’t think the solution should be to drop the small sizes. Size discrimination shouldn’t be so prevalant in our society on either end of the spectrum.
I’m already gearing up to start making my own clothes. This kind of crap just confirms my decision.
I’ve found some pretty nice plus-sized patterns online and in the fabric stores–and this way I can pick exactly the colors, fabric, and fit I want.
The clothing shops’ loss will be the fabric stores’ gain.
Toni – that’s so true! The only clothes they seem to carry over size 10 are all huge cartoon print with sequins muumuus and gaudy dashikis. Of course they aren’t selling that garbage.
When I first read this article I was surprised to even find out that Ann Taylor had 16’s to begin with. I have just been walking past the store in my mall for years assuming that the tiny, flat chested mannequins in the window are the sizes they are selling. Too bad.
@Silly – Don’t expect this situation to make any sense. Businesses have always considered plus sizes quite risky, and they don’t want to take a risk. They dip a toe into uncharted waters, and when the customers don’t come running, they say to themselves, “It’s just as we thought!” and go right back to their old way of doing things.
Can you tell I’m just a teeny bit bitter about this? That is because I’ve spent many years, decades even, going to stores with money in hand, ready to spend, only to be given the most asinine excuses, or getting treated outright rudely.
Every so often, I would read in the newspaper that the fashion industry was in a slump. Pardon me if I don’t feel much sympathy for them.
Well, crap, I finally get down to a 16 and STILL can’t shop at Ann Taylor stores! What? Do they think we fat girls ONLY shop online?!?
I think there are two factors at work. One is that there probably really are fewer shoppers of high-quality plus sized clothing. The majority of women may be size 12 plus, but the majority of the key clothes-shopping demographic are probably a smaller size. Clothes manufacturers are all after the 18-30 year olds, who have jobs but no children, who are looking for partners, who are in the higher socioeconomic brackets. There certainly are plenty of fat women out there. As a demographic, however, they just are RELATIVELY less likely to spend money on fancy clothes. So there’s the reasonable economic issue.
The unreasonable one is that a lot of manufacturers just don’t want to be too associated with those awful fatties that are so disgusting and who are killing the environment and jacking up our health care costs and blah, blah, blah. So they don’t want to advertise, and then they don’t get much business. Yuck.
A few years back, a blogger I read went into a clothing store to buy some summer tops, as she’d done in previous years. This time, the clerk told her that the store had phased out any size over a 12. The company decided that selling “plus” sizes would allow fat women to enable their own fatness. If there were no more fat sizes, the fat women would lose weight to fit into the smaller sizes provided. Yes, the clerk actually said this.
I wish I could remember the name of the store, but I was annoyed to distraction at the time.
Denise – That is the most idiotic reply I’ve ever heard. Because feeling a fabric can tell you how it’d fit. wtf. >_<;
@Trabb’s Boy – if you look at the weight statistics for women 18-30, you might start to see that your second reason – ew! fatties in OUR clothes – is closer to reality. (And there’s store that target older demographics without adding plus sizes, too, so it’s not just the 18-30 set.)
Brandy, hence this sentence:
But I’ll re-emphasize to discourage flaming – we shouldn’t drop *any* sizes. We should, actually, add more.
I was making a point about how ridiculous their claim of “no market” is.
@Trabb’s Boy: The largest I’ve ever been is a 16, but I had an adventure recently in which I dropped to near-invisibility, and then regained weight back to normal sizes — and I will TELL you why larger women don’t buy as many clothes, and that is because fit is a crapshoot.
When I was a size 0-2, everything fit. Seriously, everything. I had nearly the same figure peculiarities I do now – indeed, greater, by percentage, because my waist and hips were STILL different by eleven inches, and my shoulders, which are all bone, were STILL 18″ across – but everything fit. I might have to shorten things a bit, because I am short. But there were never rise issues, everything buttoned, everything hung well, and if it was my kind of colour, it looked good.
When things finally turned around for me, and I began regaining weight, by the time I hit size 8, suddenly clothes got weird. Pants crotches might be down at my knees. Waistbands wouldn’t fit. Legs would be too tight, while waists would still be too loose. Shirts NEVER buttoned. Things would just be … off, proportions wrong, details in the wrong place. And almost every woman bigger than size 8 reports the same problems, because sizes are scaled up by some weird algorithm, rather than on actual human bodies of that size.
I now range from size 8-12, and as someone else put it on some other forum, yesterday, I do not see why I, at a perfectly normal size, should be left out of the loop of decently fitting clothing – let ALONE anybody any larger, because believe you me, I remember what a freaking nightmare it was to shop at a size 16, and find even one pair of jeans in six stores that fit me. Having been large-ish my entire life to that point, it was revelatory – revelatory, I tell you, not to mention enraging – to realise that this was not in fact a universal problem.
The SIZES are there, but the clothes are designed and conceived with women shaped like Sarah Jessica Parker in mind, to hang rather than fit. And then retailers have the consummate gall to say “oh, larger sizes just aren’t selling.” Yes, because the clothes only look good on, and fit, tiny women, because they’re DESIGNED for tiny women, and yet 90% of the actual clothes-buying public IS NOT THAT SIZE. STFU, retailers.
Move more, eat less and you won’t have to worry about finding clothes that fit you. I have been there. There is a whole other world out there, people, don’t let it pass you by.
@Prettywoman: Wow, please tell me more about this other world you speak of. Is it a magical place where my thighs never rub together and all life’s problems are solved with the reduction of food intake in relation to hours on the treadmill?
Point is, regardless of where you’re at on this journey to the “other” realm you should be able to find a pair of jeans that fit and not be treated with disrespect when you show up willing to spend money in their store. Nobody is asking the thin people (the residents of this “whole other world” I assume) to give up anything or pay extra for their tiny little clothes. We just want a shirt that buttons over our boobs and a pair of khakis that can button around the waist without causing camel toe.
We pay for these things, often more, and it would be nice to hear a “thank you, come again” instead of being told our transaction is more appreciated online.
Prettywoman, while I’m sure you meant well, but this website is meant to be a safe space where no one has to hear about how dieting can change our lives. Everyone here has done it. We’ve tried it. We know it doesn’t work, and we are working on loving ourselves exactly as we are, and valuing ourselves for more than our dress size. I lost 65 lbs and kept it off for over four years, but am gaining it back now. I’m glad you are feeling good, but I’ve been there, too, and it didn’t work for me in the long term. Please be supportive of our decision not to diet, and please keep this a safe space for us. Thanks.
Whoops. Unnecessary “but” in that first sentence. I really need to proofread before posting.
I forget where I read this, but I think the average “fit model” is a size 2/4 and retailers just scale up. As someone mentioned above, that doesn’t account for hips, bellies, asses, etc and is why we end up with all those weird fit issues in “large” sizes like 16/18. I was a HUGE fan of Forth & Towne for the five seconds it was around because the clothes were designed around a fit model that was a 10/12. Of course, that place went out of business because of the same lack of market. Eye roll.
Prettywoman, that’s not even true. You can eat less, move more, and still be a large size.
Last time I checked, nobody was paying me to wear their clothes. If I’m paying, I want clothes that fit well.
In this economy, those in the clothing industry must surely be thriving if they can afford to ignore the market for large sizes.
Prettywoman, let’s ignore the fact that people eat all sorts of different amounts, exercise all sorts of different amounts, and are all different sizes; let’s pretend that any woman can be a size two with only a couple-three years of serious work and that once she gets there she can stay there. (this isn’t true, but let’s say for the sake of argument it is)
I would like to know *exactly* what I, as a woman well into the realm of “morbidly obese” am expected to wear during that couple-three years of strenuous work. Men’s sweatpants? Why? Women who wear big sizes have money to spend on clothes–why don’t they exist?
@im – The standard used to be an 8 in Standard American Sizing. Standard American Sizing is what’s still used in most sewing patterns, and an 8 in that scale has measurements approximating, yes, to somewhere between what is labelled a 2 and a 4 in regular retail level clothing. (Designer and more expensive “bridge” clothing still mostly uses standard sizing, without much if any vanity drift, which is why designer clothing “fits small”.)
I asked someone once, on a fashion professionals’ blog, if that was true, and she scoffed at me – “oh, no no, we use size 8s who are 5’6″, and it’s a size 8 in the line.” But quite frankly, I don’t always believe that, as a person who sews myself. In many, many lines, the off proportions in fitted clothing are just too obvious right round a size 10, for things to be scaled up a mere size.
Mind you, there are other factors at work, such as that cheaper clothing is cut in great stacks, which can throw the bottom pattern pieces WAY out of alignment (causing huge discrepancies even in one single size).
On Fringe, people kept getting cut in half when they tried to pass into the other world.
Just sayin’
^^I mean violently, not like “omg! I lost half my size so I’m better than everyone!”
I have a huge problem with certain stores that cater to “outdoorsy” people. You know, the woman with unwashed hair and Birkenstocks, the ones who refuse to wear makeup and dress in tank tops and shorts?
The problem with these stores (the biggest offender being REI) is that their idea of large or extra large is often no larger than a size 14 or perhaps a skimpy-cut size 16. Oh, you can go there and buy Keen sandals or men’s coats or stock up on camping supplies, but heaven forbid you want to get clothes to wear while kayaking. Or hiking. Or yoga. All activities I participate in on a regular basis.
I am a size 18-20 and after 2 years of dieting and exercising, I have only lost 20 lbs. I refuse to give up my outdoor activities because there are no appropriate clothes to wear. I have told my husband that I am boycotting that place.