No, no calm down. I don't mean like that. I mean last night's Trinny and Susannah, about "Big Girls". I do find them very irritating as individuals thus I was a late and reluctant recruit to their bandwagon. But I do like their approach, much of it applied common sense, to dressing properly.
I do have my reservations. I could not help notice that the programme was sponsored by Littlewoods Catalogue, with the pre-and post-ad sequences featuring emaciated models. Their website has a tie-in for size 16+ with the clothes tastefully moderated by chunky size Six models and with a very limited range.
I could identify with many of the sentiments expressed by the women on the programme. It is ridiculous that so few shops cater for the reported 45% of the population who are size 16 and above. What many of the women seemed to be implying is that shops ought to stock a more normal size range as some sort of human right, or something. I disagree; I think it is bad business of any retail outlet to ignore so many potential customers.
As an accountant I am struggling to do the sums - if you deliberately or carelessly exclude between a third and a half of potential customers, you are reducing your potential sales by a similar factor. If, instead, you study the market and sell accordingly, broadly speaking you will increase your turnover by 50%-100%. No philosophy of human rights or pandering involved - sheer hard-headed business.
Supermarkets - not a sector I have any love for - are expanding and their profits soaring partly because they are sensitive to demand. Pubs are closing like nobody's business because they are stagnant, conservative, and inflexible, run by people who think they know better than customers what customers want. It amazes me how many businesses are run by people who don't have a clue about business.
One of the main points that came up was that it isn't sufficient to design outfits for a skinny body and then scale them up. What is necessary is to design for the full figure, accentuating all the positives. I recall reading somewhere some years ago some wanky fashionista defending their use of emaciated models in fashion shows on the basis that their clothes don't look right on anybody of Size 10 or above. I can't help thinking that that represents a design fault. Imagine designing a car that isn't suitable for motorway use, or a computer that can't connect to the internet. There may be niche markets for these but they are unfit for purpose in the general, mass market. Just like the clothes-for-waifs available on the High Street.
I imagine the Leaders and Shapers in Fashion, as in just about every industry, are divorced from their core customer. They exist in a narrow world obsessed by fashion and skinniness, little knowing that beyond their closed circle are women with disposable income who can't be bothered worrying about starving themselves, or are too busy to spend three hours a day in soul-destroying gym work. Women who are pre-occupied by their caseload, their P&L, their deadlines, their caring responsibilities or their multifarious hobbies. The fashionistas, driving round, never mixing, think that all 'fat' women slob around in poverty and trackie bottoms.
A dozen or so years ago I wrote to Marks and Spencer pointing out their lack of pretty or sexy bras above a C cup size. They wrote back stating there was no demand for such things. I wrote back asking for their evidence that there was no demand. I was demanding it. I suggested that, on the whole, women with boobs would see the absence of pretty or sexy bras, and either walk out or settle for the ugly matronly garments on offer without positively registering their demand. I never received a second reply. And like very many women I no longer buy bras at M&S.
There are many suppliers who have studied the market and realise what size women are, and what they want. In any case surely, M&S as capitalists, should have created demand for their products. Rather than making full-figured women think they have to be satisfied with the matronly products, shouldn't they do what Bravissimo, for example, do - tell women to celebrate our curves, flaunt what we've got and so on?
I see telly from the 70s and 80s, when, it seems, it was de rigeur to dress in the most androgynous way possible. I'm sorry but I never became a feminist in order to ape the behaviour of men; feminism is about valuing and celebrating women and all that is womanly. That applies to so-called female values/traits in the workplace and civil society; to celebrating women's bodies for their own sake not merely as men's playthings; and understanding that women individually and collectively have no less value than men as voters, consumers, users, patients etc, and that women individually and collectively should stop apologising when suppliers and providers fail to supply and provide what we want and need, and demand the best.
Not one of the retailers who bothered to show up was able to offer an explanation of why they either don't cater at all for full-figured women, or, if they do, their designs are hideous. It was a bit pathetic. If you can't spin your own product, what's your point?
It remains to be seen whether the High Street retailers get the point....
As a PS, if 45% of women are size 16 or above, doesn't that mean probably only about a third are under Size 14, of which a significant proportion will be children, so, really, those adult women who are size 12 and under are the abnormal freakish ones, who should perhaps be banished to specialised shops, leaving the proper shops for normal women?
