Teens Come in All Sizes, So Why Don’t Their Clothes?
Trendy teen clothes in large sizes?
As if.
Any adolescent fashion hound can tell you that when it comes to cool outfits like velvet burn-out skirts and boot-leg jeans, chances are you won’t find them in size 14. For plus-size teens, the pickings are slim: oversized sweats, loose shirts and baggy jeans--often pulled from the racks in the men’s department.
“Larger-size girls want to wear clothes like Gwyneth Paltrow wears, not like Kathy Bates,” said Marie Moss, fashion director of Seventeen magazine. “They want the same stuff as their size 6 friends.”
She should know. Whenever the magazine offered any tidbits on plus sizes--cool prom dresses, fashion tips from plus-size model / author, Emme--Moss and her staff were flooded with letters and e-mail from readers clamoring for more information.
In response to these demands, the magazine ran a six-page fashion spread last month of large-size clothes worn by pretty young models with robust, curvaceous figures instead of the standard sylph proportions. “Cool Clothes for Bigger Sizes” was prominently promoted on the cover.
“My mission with this magazine is to show that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes and colors,” said Meredith Berlin, Seventeen’s editor in chief. “We want to say, just because you are not a size 4, 6, 8 or 10, you can’t look terrific. It’s really about building self-esteem and showing girls that there are choices.”
Not that it was a breeze finding trendy plus-size outfits to photograph or plus-size teen models.
“Editors are at the mercy of what is available in the showrooms, and samples are made up in size 6,” said Moss. “Even when we found a great girl who was a size 12 or 14, we didn’t have a sample to photograph her in. It was a Catch-22.”
Finding large-size teen models was daunting, said the editor. “When you call an agency and tell them you want plus-size teen girls, they think you’re insane.”
Finally, after scouting high schools in Connecticut and New Jersey, the editors found their ample, fresh-faced teens at agencies specializing primarily in more mature large-size models.
When it came to choosing clothes, Moss was adamant that they be something other than the usual oversize tops and jeans. Her selection: a purple velvet Empire dress, camisoles, skimpy cardigans, romantic floral skirts and a short velvet burn-out skirt.
When the editors couldn’t find large-size samples, they requested to have them made. For a fashion editorial in a teen bible like Seventeen, the fashion houses were eager to comply.
“We did camisoles where you see bare arms and a tight little knee-length skirt, which is what all the kids are wearing,” Moss said. “Plus-size women always hear these ‘rules’ that you should wear solids and long sleeves and big skirts. For teens, there are no rules. The joy of being a teenager is being able to wear the newest trend the second it comes out and experimenting with who you are.”
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Ady Gluck-Frankel, president and design director of Necessary Objects, a contemporary house whose fashions are featured in the Seventeen spread, agreed.
“Seventeen validated my theory that larger-size teenagers aren’t being served,” she said. “They walk into junior departments and assume all the cool clothes there won’t fit them. They don’t want to go to a large-size woman’s store. They want to go to the same department as their smaller-sized friends and wear basically the same trendy clothes, except with more fabric.”
Necessary Objects’ size range runs from SX to XL (which is about a size 13). Gluck-Frankel said she plans to eventually introduce an XXL size.
“The stores tell me they don’t even sell XL,” she said. “My answer is you have to let plus-size teens know it’s OK for them to shop in the same department as a size 6. They’ve stopped coming because they couldn’t find anything. Their job is to get them back.”
Debi Johnson, owner / merchandise manager of trendy teen catalog GirlfriendsLA, whose clothes also appeared in the Seventeen piece, said she had increased her size range to include XL because of customer demand.
“The bottom line is teens all want the same cool clothes, and they shouldn’t be limited because of size,” she said. “We even request our models not be size 1, which is often the case with teen models. We want to show you don’t have to be Kate Moss to wear our clothes.”
Seventeen’s fashion director said she hoped there will come a day when plus-size teen fashion won’t be an issue.
“Someday I’d like to do a denim story with a girl wearing a size 6 and another in a size 14 and it’s nothing special,” said Moss. “It’s just a story about cool jeans.”
