Eyes on the Size
Ceslie Armstrong, the editor of newly launched Grace magazine, says it’s time for full-figured women to get the attention they deserve. “It’s a huge, huge, market,” she said.
Pun intended.
“Nearly 70% of American women wear a size 12 or above, but we’re treated like we’re invisible,” Armstrong said in the magazine’s 5th Avenue offices. Armstrong, an elegant and unabashed size 16 herself, wants to reinvent the way the fashion industry perceives the country’s plus-size market--the retail segment that is growing the fastest but whose customers have the fewest choices.
In the same way Martha Stewart exalted domesticity, Armstrong hopes to help American women crave curves--or at least accept them. Her previous attempt, Mode magazine, folded last September. At a time when advertisers are holding budgets down, trying once again to expand a nation’s notion of beauty may be heavy lifting. Or it could be a super-sized business opportunity.
Most magazines aimed at plus-size women have had a difficult time staying in business; Extra Hip and Radiance are no longer publishing. But the first such title, California-based BBW (Big Beautiful Woman), founded in the late ‘70s, still publishes every other month following a brief shutdown in 1999.
Last month, Grace magazine, for women “who live life to the fullest,” claimed space on newsstands between “get thin for summer” issues of Glamour and Vogue. The cover features a “real” woman, a cardiac surgery nurse who moonlights as size 12 model.
Designed for women who are often stigmatized for their size, the contents are forthright. The debut issue includes a spread on bathing suits that actually fit, an article on sex with the lights on, an arty sepia-toned nude portrait, and a humor column criticizing Procter & Gamble’s new maxi-maxi-pad. Grace, like other women’s magazines, offers ample material for aspirations and fantasy. But there are no mentions of diets or ways to firm abs--in fact, one fashion spread features a model making cookies. A shoe layout plays on two favorite indulgences: stilettos and strawberry tarts. For the swimsuit shoot, the models were encouraged not to suck in, to show a lot of thigh, reveal their tummies and revel in their curves. Instead of starving themselves for a week before the shoot, they posed for pictures for a while and then all sat down for a hearty lunch.
“The idea was to have fun,” said Armstrong. “It’s about celebrating the body, and being comfortable in your own skin. It’s also about striking a balance between extreme obesity and starving malnutrition. Neither side is healthy.”
With the national economy in a downturn, it may seem like a risky time to launch a magazine and a Web site (www.gracestyle.com). But Grace is aimed smack at the middle of a growing national trend. While retail sales have been flat for sizes 0 to 12, plus-size sales have soared as much as 18% in the last two years. Retailers have begun to respond to the growing demand for more realistic fashions, taking plus-size wardrobes out of store basements and back racks and putting them in prime space.
Saks Fifth Avenue has devoted an entire floor since 1999 to Salon Z, a department for sizes 14 to 24. “No other category has a whole floor,” said Michael Macko, Saks’ director of publicity, “so that’s a big deal for us.”
While Liz Claiborne has had a plus-sized line--Elisabeth--for 10 years, and added a casual collection called Woman this spring, other designers have only recently jumped on board. In the last few years, Tommy Hilfiger, Anne Klein, Dana Buchman and DKNY have expanded their ranges. Italian luxury clothier Max Mara has launched a new line called Marina Rinaldi.
But most fashion magazines, so narrowly focused on the cult of thinness, have been nearly blind to the trend--and the potential advertising dollars. While Vogue tiptoed into taboo territory in April with its “Shape” issue, the only truly plus-sized model, size 14 Kate Dillon, was pictured as a giantess facing a diminutive muscleman and a toy car. (All that was missing, wrote Slate critic Emily Nussbaum, was the “freak-show calliope music.”)
Kate Betts, the former editor of Harper’s Bazaar, understands all too well the dynamic that keeps real women out of the pages of fashion magazines. Though she was struggling with a postpartum weight gain herself, she decided to pull Renee Zellweger off the cover after the actress gained weight for her role in “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” (Betts apologized for the decision in a thoughtful essay on body image that ran in March in the New York Times.)
“I’ve heard people commenting on the Vogue issue, saying ‘I don’t buy Vogue to look at fat people,’ said Betts. “And as harsh and horrible a comment as that is, it is true. People buy Vogue for fantasy, and one of the fantasies of women in our culture is to be thin and young. So that’s why I think it’s smart for Grace to take more of a lifestyle approach, to offer more than fashion and beauty.”
Grace fills a void left by Mode, a similarly targeted fashion magazine that Armstrong helmed until it folded last year. Though the 4-year-old Mode was considered successful with a half-million strong sales base, it still lost money. The owner, Freedom Publications, decided to sell it to focus on its trade magazines, but couldn’t find a buyer in the uncertain economic climate last fall.
It closed in late September, around the same time as Conde Nast’s Mademoiselle. Soon after, an investor asked Armstrong to put together a new magazine and to expand its focus to include food, travel, and lifestyle. The deep pockets belong to Jane Siebels, who runs Bahamas-based Green Cay Asset Management, a socially conscious investment fund. Though she’s not one to sacrifice return, her interests are more than monetary. “A magazine like this is very important because it promotes an image of real women and can do social good, “ Siebels said. “At the same time, it makes sense financially. You have advertisers looking for a home, and there’s no competition for this demographic. I think there’s a real need out there.”
Though Armstrong intends to cater to a specific niche of the market, readers and advertisers may resist being pigeonholed. “With luck, they’ve learned from Mode’s mistakes,” said Samir Husni, the head of University of Mississippi’s magazine program. “There may be many, many large women out there, but they don’t necessarily want to focus on that aspect of themselves. That’s why there is not a successful Divorce magazine. Grace may get a cult following, but I believe they will have trouble attracting a mass readership.”
Retailer Lane Bryant, the plus-size industry leader, decided not to advertise in Grace’s spring and fall issues this year, booking “mainstream” fashion magazines such as Vogue, Jane, and Glamour instead. “We wanted to validate our customer and send the message that she is equal to every other woman,” said Greg Clark, Lane Bryant’s vice president of marketing. But Lane Bryant will sell the magazines in its stores and may place ads next year, he said.
Grace is working for every ad dollar, but the magazine has rejected advertisements that do not follow its philosophy--those that tout weight-loss programs or that picture models who are too thin.
“There was one with a size 2 girl in a bikini on a beach,” said Armstrong. “Not only would they waste their money with us, it would alienate our readers. They were missing the message.”
Armstrong expects that like Mode, Grace’s subscriptions will largely outweigh newsstand sales, because, as one woman said as she purchased Grace at a Grand Central Station newsstand two days after its debut, “Who wants to be the fat girl buying the fat girl magazine?” Most women’s fashion magazines, for example, sell around 40% of copies on newsstands.
Grace, which costs $3.99 on the newsstand and $18 for 10 issues, has inherited a base of loyal and expectant readers left behind by Mode, said Armstrong. The magazine also scored a marketing coup by arranging distribution at Kmart and Wal-Mart and will do joint marketing with Liz Claiborne and Macy’s, among other companies. The next issue comes out in September, and the magazine will be published every other month next year.
That will give Grace time to build its readership and work out the kinks that have bedeviled its launch. Editors rolled out the magazine just eight months after the first meeting, and the quick start-up made tempers flare and detailed plans fray, according to a staff member. Grace parted company with its PR agency just two weeks before the launch, had to redo television shoots and embarrassed major advertiser Liz Claiborne by misspelling its name--twice--in the magazine.
More seriously, Grace’s logo is a near-exact replica of a now-defunct magazine of the same name in New Zealand, and another Grace exists in Tennessee. (See accompanying story, this page.)
But many women are rooting for a magazine that reflects real women. At a Macy’s fashion show to promote its private-label line INC Woman and the magazine, beauty consultant Kim Kitt-Cooper applauded the models as they came off the stage. “We’re not going to ever look like Kate Moss, even if we wanted to,” she said. “And now that there are decent clothes for us, who cares about skinny?”
On the runway, 26-year-old model Randi Graves strutted in black and white capri pants and a fitted black top. The main difference between her and a standard mannequin--besides her weight, height and age--was that she had a million-dollar smile and looked genuinely happy to be there.
“A lot of people think I’m fat,” the size-16 model said after the show. “But I think my weight fits my face and my bone structure just fine. I’m a grown woman now, and I like my curves.”
