As a plus sized fashion lover, who also cares about the planet, I’ve always tried to tread carefully when it comes to buying and recycling clothes.
Fast fashion has become one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases and water and air pollution. It creates problematic levels of waste, and often comes with extremely poor working conditions for workers in other countries.
In the last three years or so, we’ve seen a lot of brands begin to make pledges towards sustainability, coming out with their own sustainable ranges. There’s also been a rise in blog posts on the benefits of shopping at charity shops and upcycling.
In theory, this sounds great, but there’s still a bit of a niggling problem: It’s incredibly hard to shop sustainably when you are a visibly larger, plus sized person.
I end up buying the majority of my clothing at stores such as ASOS, River Island, Pretty Little Thing, Oasis and other online boutique stores.
I’ve tried to shop elsewhere but British plus sized consumers are at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to the brands that choose to cater to us. We also have to contend with there not being a huge amount of options when it comes to purchasing vintage or secondhand items.
There have been countless occasions where I have been in charity shops and have seen women who are a lot smaller reaching for clothes sized 22, 24 and 26 in a bid to achieve an ‘oversized’ look.
I’ve also seen many ‘How to Charity Shop’ YouTube videos that feature smaller people intentionally buying the plus sized items.
While I understand that this is a trend, it excludes many plus sized people who want to start their sustainable clothing journey, or are simply unable to afford to keep buying new clothes constantly.
Brands don’t make it easy for us either. I recently went online to look for a pair of sustainable dungarees, as they are my favourite style of clothing.
I logged onto an independent sustainable website, who have a reputation for making excellent dungarees, only to find that the top size they stocked was a size 16-18.
That some fashion brands exclude bigger women when cutting their clothes is not news to me. The reason I felt surprised in this instance, though, was that the exclusion came from a brand with a ‘mission.’
A quick Google search soon revealed that this was not an isolated case, and numerous brands – including some of the early sustainable fashion pioneers – stop at a size 16.
This size range stops women over a size 16-18 from making a more sustainable, conscious choice – which is all the more unfathomable given that the average woman in the UK is a size 16.
‘I think it’s important that straight sized allies help push for brands to create plus size clothing,’ says Aja Barker, blogger, writer and style consultant whose specialty lies in sustainable clothing.
‘We can’t say that we care about feminism and push for a sustainable movement if we’re leaving bigger sizes out of the conversation.’
There are a few brands within the plus size sustainability landscape such as Universal Standard, Reformation, Hackwith Design House and Sea Salt, but the vast majority of these brands are US based, with a lot of the brands not being able to ship to the UK due to GDPR regulations.
I understand why some brands have not expanded their size ranges, as there is a cost attached to stocking multiple size options, with the differences in the amount of fabric needed for a size 8 and a size 26, say, impacting manufacturing costs and profit margins.
But the problem arises whatever your budget. Even if you were to splash more cash, the sizes available don’t change. It’s much harder for plus sized women to purchase new clothes from environmentally-friendly brands. This is a fact.
So what can be done? Smart sustainable brands – the ones aiming to sweep up the potential demand from the growing market of conscious shoppers – should ensure that they are being size inclusive in their approach, so that women of every size are able to join the conscious shopping movement.
Ultimately, when it comes to the fashion industry’s impact on the climate, progress won’t be made if sections of the population are not provided with the tools to change.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/09/dressing-sustainably-is-almost-impossible-as-a-plus-size-woman-11453091/
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