The piece had to do with a clothing chain called Topshop with stores in the New York area which, in fairness, I had never heard of. Apparently a lady went in there looking for jeans, and found a mannequin of a rather tiny size. It is photographed here:
As you can see in the picture, it certainly is thin. So this woman, Laura Kate Berry, an admitted "size 10/12" shopper, sent Topshop a very long rant (and if you've read this column, you trust that I know what a long rant looks like), complaining about the damage this mannequin does, because today's girls have such issues with body image, etc., etc. You can read it if you have a few hours and a lot of tolerance for repetition.
Now, in point of fact I bow to few males in terms of my bona fides to discuss this topic. Having once owned, with my best girl, the nation's largest plus-size bridal shop, I think I can blend a sympathy with Miss Berry's argument, with an understanding of the market.
And I've already written about the silliness of the way women's clothes are sold right here.
Here's the thing -- this argument is going to creep into some crevices that are going to depart from Miss Berry's complaint. That mannequin is almost impossibly thin, and she is pretty evidently complaining that it is quite over the top in its portrayal of the female form. And in that, she's probably right -- there is little to be gained by using a size negative-4 mannequin.
But what will come of this is going to be a mass victimization drive -- OK, it actually already exists -- where the whole thing is about stores selling skinny clothes and why aren't they carrying items that flatter larger figures which, of course, are far more typical. This is just driving girls to eating disorders and issues with body image, that sort of thing. True though it may be, we will surely create another oppressed group, no doubt, for Democrats to try to find a way to suck votes from.
But this is far, far more nuanced a discussion than it sounds. The jeans in that picture above were designed by some designer, somewhere, in a particular way. I'm not the expert, but my best girl swears that such a design as they have in the picture, simply would not look good on women above a certain size, and I assume that she's quite right. Now, whether those particular jeans only look good on size-6 and below figures, I can't tell you. But my wife does, and she has years of experience in the industry.
Her point was simple -- women's shapes vary tremendously, with an average around size 12-14 or so. More important, the further you move up toward average, and then larger, sizes, the more variety in the "shape" of the woman becomes possible, such that more different options have to be available to flatter the different shapes that an array of size-16 women, say, can have. While pretty much all size-2 women can wear something designed to flatter a size-2 woman, that's not the case as the sizes rise to, and above, average -- because the shapes of larger women vary so much.
What that means, then, is that the stores need to have a bigger variety in larger designs to cover the different shapes of the non-skinny, and variety means more stock, which means higher investments (I'll reference this point next paragraph). In short, it's a heck of a lot easier, and way cheaper, if women's clothing stores carry primarily designs that flatter smaller figures. We get that.
So where is the "fault", such as there may be fault -- and given that this is creeping quickly into a victimization argument, someone will be looking for fault -- to be found? Well, that's a bit complex, too. Stores have buyers, who decide on and acquire the clothing to be sold. They have guidelines set by the chain and operate within them. So if you find that a store has only skinny mannequins, and only skinny clothing on them, and only skinny versions of that clothing on the racks, then you can expect that either:
- The store operating model is to sell a particular style, and it only flatters smaller women
- The buyer likes the profit margin on styles that only happen to flatter smaller women
- The margins are really tight, so the store only wants to carry smaller sizes (see above)
- The stores' floor space is really tight, so the chain only carries smaller sizes (same)
Again -- it is a lot more expensive to cater to average-size and larger women because a store needs a lot of different styles to flatter the diversity of larger shapes. If you don't quite get that, read it again because it's critical.
You get the idea. None of this is about body image, it's about business. There are stores that specialize in providing a variety of designs which were specifically designed to flatter certain shapes of larger sizes. We owned one and lost our life savings at it. That's a hard business -- in our bridal salon, we only had samples above size 10, and to provide samples above size 20, we literally had to have a lot of samples which flattered a half-dozen completely different body types. No wonder typical bridal shops in the USA only carry size-8 samples! It is way cheaper, even if the average bride has to drape the sample in front of her to see what it might look like.
I get Laura Kate Berry's point, I really do. But I seriously doubt that Topshop is overtly trying to sell a particular body image. It is far more likely that they simply decided to carry a certain style of product, and that product happens to look good on the skinny, and not on others. If she wants to do something really productive, she should patronize those stores that offer designs for her size, and take to Twitter and publicly salute the designers who create them. That's why God created social media.
Now, that sounds less like a victim and more like someone trying to solve the problem. Shoot, a few more people patronizing that kind of store and we might still be in business.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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