Why, Old Navy? Why?
Rumor has it that Old Navy is planning to discontinue its plus-size clothing line, at least in stores. One thing to note is that Old Navy’s regular sizes can often be cut pretty generously. And in certain fashion seasons, their plus size section is a wasteland where ugly clothing goes to die. Still, they have some great basics and I’ve scored one or two particularly awesome pieces from their plus-size department. Here are some of the comments at Budget Fashionista:
i know a lot of women who depend on their plus sizes for decent, affordable work clothes.
Beyond plus-size discrimination, I have “digital divide” issues about this. If someone comes into your store, you shouldn’t send them home to buy your clothes.
The Old Navy near me removed their plus size line late in the fall but continued carrying their maternity line in the store. When a manager told me what the new policy was I told her that might be a bad marketing move. She asked why and I said that those women are only fat for nine months but I’ll be fat for the rest of my life. She didn’t even crack a smile.
This is not a good thing one of my best girl friends is a plus size and I know she shops at Old Navy.She is a very stylish lady and loves to shop and clothes make her feel good.
That’s too bad. I never liked their plus sizes at all…..torsos, legs, and arms always WAY too short and snug. But It’s too bad for women who could wear them. We Big Chicks have A LOT of money to spend, if only someone would give us something to BUY.
And now I see the rumor is they’re discontinuing size 20 and XXL in their regular lines. Aw, man. What is the logic here? Anyway, how do you feel about this? Do you shop at Old Navy? Will you continue to shop them online, or will you give up, since they clearly don’t want our business?
Posted by mo pie
i rarely shop at old navy anymore – their stuff, besides shirts, never fit because its made for women w/out hips and thighs… i do like their men’s stuff though, go figure… i think its stupid for them to discontinue both plus and maternity lines – soon we’ll have nothing stylish to wear… might as well put a bag over our heads too…
I don’t think I’ve ever actually shopped at Old Navy, but I did enter a drawing for a gift card for it today because I knew they had relatively cheap plus-size clothes. I guess the joke’s on me! I definitely wouldn’t shop there if I was relegated to shopping online… I have to try stuff on, or at least be able to try it on at home and return/exchange easily. I don’t buy many clothes online because it’s such a hassle to exchange anything!
i saw the sign in my old navy the other day, and instead of making me sad it just severly pissed me of. And now i doubt i would even spend my money on their flip flops.
Well, I have a lot of my work clothes from Old Navy and had not heard this. I probably just won’t shop with them any longer, because while I love their clothes when they fit, the sizes can be so inconsistent as to make it impossible for me to order anything on-line. Guess they lose my business!
while the quality isn’t always very good, the prices are right.but will i continue to shop them online? no. i’ve literally spent thousands of dollars there over the years, and they want to relegate me to an online-only shopping experience? old navy has been one of the only stores i can shop at with my thin friends, as well as my husband (p.s. will they be removing the large-waisted men’s jeans? the men’s xxl? i somehow doubt it). til now, it’s been an oasis in a lot of ways, in that i can walk in and have pretty much the same shopping experience as anyone else. i don’t have to feel like i’m having to do something differently because i’m big. so, not only will i stop shopping there, i’ll cancel my old navy card. and tell them exactly why i’m doing it.
Oh, this makes me very sad. I love shopping at Old Navy. Their clothes fit me very well, and the price is right. I wear an 18 so I can fit into their regular sizes, but I often find that the plus size 18 is a better fit. Online shopping isn’t really a viable option because their sizing is so eratic. I have tried it in the past. You can order two pairs of pants that are the same in the same size but two different colors and one will be too big while the other is too small.
Apart from my own disappointment, I wonder why they would do this. You hear so much about the rise of obesity these days. I would thnk that the plus size clothing market would be a huge money maker. Why would they turn away from that?
My sister always shops at Old Navy. She heard about this, and is very angry at them. I agree with you, what sense is there in neglecting an entire market of people who have cash to spend?
This continuing size-bias in all aspects of society, is utterly pathetic. Why can’t people move on to more important issues. Like curing cancer. Making everyone thin isn’t a cure.
Our local Target has already done the same thing.
Old navy is definetely making a stupid move here, like jackie said why ignore an entire market of people who have the money to buy their clothes?
Honestly, I’ve never liked old navy, I think most of their clothes are poorly made, and I know plenty of other stores who sell cute affordable plus size clothes.
I wonder what’s the highest men’s size Old Navy carries in their stores–online they have a Big and Tall section and sizes up to XXXL. It’s always totally irked me that the range of men’s “regular” sizes in most stores seems to go much higher than women’s sizes. Maybe there’s a case for sex discrimination here…
I’ve always thought that the larger sizes of the regular line (the 18s and 20s and XXLs) never fit right. I’ve ordered some of the plus-size stuff online before though, because the Old Navy stores near me never had the plus-size line. As long as they keep letting me order stuff online but return it to the store if it doesn’t fit, that’s fine with me.
I’ve wondered about Target. It seems like their plus-size section has been getting smaller, and they keep moving it around in the store closest to me. Now it’s one rack of ugly tops squished in between Maternity and Workout clothes, as if they are trying to give me a hint or something.
I quit shopping at Old Navy a couple of years ago. I used to shop there a lot. I wear a straight size 12, so other than their being out of my size, which they often were, finding clothes there before wasn’t a problem. But I think that they began to refocus their business rather than on families, almost exclusively on teens. The cut of the clothes changed. I used to wear their pants. I don’t anymore. The cut is way too low, and I mean way too low, and too straight.
They quit designing clothes that I could even think about wearing to work.
It all looks cheap and too trendy to me now.
Maybe I’m just getting old. But when I go in there, I never see anything I want, not even their t-shirts, which now seem to always have some sparkly silliness on them.
I guess what I feel is that the company seems to be making missteps all over the place, and dropping the plus sizes is par for the course. It’s just more money they won’t be making.
Jackasses.
I rarely shop at Old Navy…I just don’t love their clothes, not to mention that I am a white girl with an ass which is not a concept that they seem to be able to create a size for. I have the same problem with Target’s bottoms as well…nothing cute or that will accommodate my bootie. I do love Target for most everything else though (I also grew up in MN where it all started so Target gives me a fix when I’m a little homesick…disturbing, I know).
I shop there for my kids, but not for myself. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me mad. I wonder, though, why do companies do this? I am too cynical to think that anything but profit is the bottom line. Do the larger sizes not sell, or does their mere presence diminish sales of other lines? Are these decisions based on actual data or more amorphous marketing concepts geared toward brand image? So, great title for this post: Why, Old Navy, Why? I’d really like to know, since many retailers seem to be taking this step.
wow this really sucks – i use old navy as a great way to exercise – cheap retail therapy – their clothes aren’t the greatest construction and don’t cause too much wallet damage. like bebe said, i too like that i can go in and have a “normal” shopping experience. i wear their 16-18 sizes but it wouldn’t surprise me if they too soon become extinct. what part does the “takes more fabric” play into it? it has always rubbed me the wrong way some catalog companies like garnet hill and j jill charge 10$ or more over the standard sizes price. it just insulting – it seems to me that most fashion houses sell enough 00-0-2’s to balance out having larger sizes – and old navy definitely sells enough of those sizes to be making triple profits on those articles. living in san francisco, i’ll be curious to see if they keep at least one plus size section in their flag ship store or not.
I never had luck with Old Navy anyway; their pants fit weird, the clothes are poorly made, and the store in my area is always a crowded mess. They do seem to be aiming at the teen market, but that doesn’t explain the plus-size move — there are plenty of plus-size teens who have a lot of disposable income and need clothes. It would have made more sense to move the maternity stuff online if they had to move something.
I think there’s an industry perception of what is “fashionable” and therefore “marketable” that makes them shy away from plus size offerings. They want the money, but they don’t want to admit to catering to the plus size market, so they stash the stuff in a corner or relegate it to their online store.
It’s the whole brand-positioning thing — the way they want to be viewed vs. the reality of who their customers really are. It’s a stupid outdated way of thinking about women and it pisses me off. Perhaps an e-mail campaign is in order? Thousands of cancelled credit cards and angry letters might send a message.
The Old navy thing bothers me in principle but not in practice as I don’t shop there at all. However, I hope that Target doesn’t do the same. I buy most of my work slacks there b/c they are much more affordable than the plus size specialty shops.
They discontinued selling plus-sized stuff at the store closest to me, and since I don’t have the money to spend at Torrid or Lane Bryant (and really don’t like their stuff anyways), I’ve been faithfully shopping with Old Navy online. Their returns have been easy and stuff, but I’m just really pissed off that people are SO anti-fat women ( and yes, I DON’T think it’s a man’s issue at all) that they can’t even carry an extra size or two to help out we bbw’s who need some nice clothes for work or functions or whathaveyou. It’s sad, and it’s bullcrap. But it’s also going on because we as a society let it happen and perpetuate the anti-fat stuff but buying weight loss products that we know won’t work, fashion magazines that make us feel bad about ourselves and are filled with unrealistic, airbrushed and computer manipulated women, and paying more money to thin, mainstream attractive women in the entertainment industry instead of giving the money to people who can REALLY act, like Kathy Bates, etc. We as women need to stop doing things like that and make American women proud of their curves!!!!
The Old Navy at the store closest to me still has plus-sized stuff but they moved it to the far back corner of the store, behind the men’s department. Shopping there is no longer quite as fun. Through in their incredibly inconsistent sizing, and I doubt I’ll be doing any online shopping with them. And it makes me sad because they were AWESOME for simple, fun pieces.
I’m a reporter for a midwestern paper, and just got back from covering the opening of the second Lacoste store in Ohio – the alligator polo company. The VP of marketing was going on and on about how the store’s demographics are upscale and elite, and make XX amount of dollars (or their parents do) etc… I think the largest clothing size for women they offer is a size 10.
Stores that want to cater to upscale markets don’t offer plus-size clothing for a reason. It’s the same reason why the great majority of those who are overweight are either middle- or lower-class.
There’s an entire history behind this psychology that I could literally write tomes on. It all factors into why, at the turn of the 20th century, fat went from being in vogue to being despised.
I guess this is a policy of The Gap’s (Old Navy’s parent company) to squeeze out the larger woman. They’ve recently made the decision to close their Forth & Towne chain of stores even though there were only a few of these shops nationwide.
If you didn’t have a Forth & Towne, let me tell you – as a size 16-18, it was such a nice experience to shop in a store that had sizes from 2-20, xs to xxl. It was one of the few stores I could go shopping with my teeny tiny mom and we could buy the same outfit (and I wasn’t regulated to the back of the store, either). While the clothes weren’t necessairly young or trendy, they were stylish and somewhat affordable. I just keep thinking, The Gap doesn’t want me as a customer…or if they do, they don’t want me seen in their stores. It’s so insulting.
Old Navy is one of the most egregious violators of labor laws, and their clothes are made in sweat shops. For that reason alone I don’t get anywhere near them anymore.
I’m starting to think that fat chicks are all going to need how to learn how to sew if we want cute clothes that fit!
Lane Bryant’s current offerings are totally heinous.
When I worked in teen media, I recall reading message board conversations in which Old Navy was derided as a fat girl brand [surprising; I would have expected it to be derided as a poor kid brand]. Maybe they’re trying to change that perception.
The other possibility which springs to mind is that fat women are more likely to take that extra step to order online if they have to, whereas thin people can just go to the next store in the mall. So cutting back on the variety of sizes in the store means more shelf space for the sizes remaining, which means a greater likelihood that they’ll have the impulse buyer’s size of any given garment in stock — because if they don’t, that impulse buyer probably isn’t going to go to the web site to order it.
I also understand the irritation in principle, but I also have been long annoyed that the Gap would put women’s plus in its lowest-end line.
I’m a professional woman in her 40s and generally wear more upscale clothing. ON, to me, seemed like cute stuff for teens and 20-somethings.
The closing of Forth and Towne, speaking strictly for me, affects me more. I’m a tweener, meaning I can wear high-number straight sizes and low-number plus sizes.
Strangely enough, I had a conversation with one of my casual carpoolers this morning, and she works in the design department of Old Navy that does plus sizes and maternity. I asked her if it is true that they are pulling the plus sizes from stores, and she confirmed it, saying that she thought it was becasue the line had never been properly marketed. Never marketed AT ALL, in fact. She also said that her boss, the one in charge of that division, is very aggressive, and wants the big sizes to stay in the stores, so it is likely that in the future, they would return. Seems this woman is good at making things happen. Fingers crossed.
I mentioned women’s comments that I had read here about the fit being odd in many of the plus size garments, and asked how many fit models they utilized. She said ONE. Ohmigod, no wonder they don’t fit most of us properly. Little, local Igigi uses all sorts of different fit models, recruiting people for new lines. (Although I bet they have increased sales dramatically since Lakisha wore their white dress on American Idol.) I cannot believe that Old Navy uses only one model. I know I was harrumphing a bit, and she said that it was hard, because there are so many different shapes and sizes out there. True dat. But maybe use three fit models to represent the most common shapes?
Anyway, it is a moot point, as most of us tricky-to-fit-right gals won’t buy clothes unless we can easily try them on. I have wasted so much money on shipping costs to and fro with internet/catalog companies for plus-sized clothes, that I have become rather cynical about it. Just let me try on the damn clothes! Sheesh.
I can’t say that I get a great deal of clothing from Old Navy, but I have always found really random stuff there for my [smaller] top half, things I would least expect to come in a size big enough to fit me. And hella cheap, which Mama like.
In reading everyone’s comments. I keep thinking about the simple fact that clothing retailers are business people. They are in business to make money. Period. Old Navy did not start their plus-sized line for altruistic reasons, and I doubt they are pulling it for some of the more evil reasons that easily come to mind. I would bet that the line is simply not pulling in the profit margins that make it viable for taking up store space. If they had invested even a miniscule portion of their advertising budget into letting the public know about the plus sizes, they might not be in this situation. If they can make higher profits from keeping the big sizes but selling them online only, then that is what they will do.
Just my two cents.
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