Or, rather, in which online shopping fails ME.
So, I thought I’d give One Stop Plus a try. They have good discounts and awesome clearance stuff. I approve of both of those things.
I ordered four items – one of which came from The Avenue and had mistaken identity issues that will be resolved locally, I hope, and three easy summer dresses.
Apparently, I have no idea what size I wear. Even scrutinizing the size charts didn’t do me any real good. My three dresses, as much as I want to love them, are easily at least one size and possible two sizes too big.
ALAS! My dress urge has been foiled for the moment! *hand to forehead*
This is the problem with online shopping. You can check size charts and your measurements 100 times but you are never going to be able to memorize (unless you are Lisa from Lee Lee’s Valise) the specific fit of clothes from every manufacturer. Especially when the fit changes according to which factory produced the garment.
I have said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again – this whole mess with clothes not fitting? Has nothing to do with your body not being “right” and everything to do with the way the women’s clothing industry works.
It is phenomenally easy to fall into the trap of thinking ill-fitting garments are your fault, especially when you are already limited to shopping online. If something doesn’t fit in the dressing room, there are as many other stores for you to try as you have time, patience, and money to try. You can go from one store in the mall to another store in the mall to another store in the mall and if that store doesn’t do it for you? You can go to YET ANOTHER STORE.
Now, obviously women (and a growing number of men) of all sizes have problems finding clothes that fit right. But there is an extra level of challenge for the very thin and the fat. Because there isn’t even stuff that fits poorly – there isn’t ANYTHING.
Talk about disheartening.
There are a lot of people who still order online from Old Navy and I don’t begrudge them cheap, trendy clothes. Hell, if there was a chance in hell that I’d hit the right size lottery, *I* might still be ordering from them. But when you take the plus sizes out of the stores and move them to online only, I don’t really care how you justify it. What you have, in actual practice, done is to tell fat women that they don’t deserve options. The hassle of ordering based on a 2-dimensional picture (of a flat garment or, if you are LUCKY, of a thin woman wearing the garment), then waiting for your order, and then having it not fit right (whether due to style or, you know, whacked out crazy size charts) is apparently all fat women get – and we ought to feel fortunate to have THAT, at least according to general impression I get from the clothing industry.
And, frankly, we deserve better than that. I grew up wandering the mall during summer vacation, looking at clothes I would never buy. How much better would my self-image have been if even a quarter of those clothes were available in sizes that would fit me?
You know, I’m not naive. The clothing industry is a business. But fat women have money to spend, dammit. Lane Bryant doesn’t get my money because they are the epitome of my style. No, they get my money because I can walk in with the need for a brightly colored something and walk out with a brightly colored something about half an hour later! There is no, well, your order will be delivered in 7-10 business days. There is just me with an armful of clothes heading for a fitting room and wishing the customer service was as good as it was when I worked there.
Not that I’m bitter about the decline in customer service. Ahem.
In any event, I want to encourage every single one of you to support your local brick-and-mortar plus size shops, especially independent places like Lee Lee’s and the soon-to-be-opening Re/Dress. When a retailer does something right, let them know about it.
In the meantime, I’ll be filling out exchange paperwork. *sigh*
15 Comments
That is exactly the reason I have been sewing my own clothes off and on for the last 30 years (especially since I became what is termed “super-plus sized”). Even when I wore a size 14, I couldn’t find clothes I liked that fit properly without alterations. If I have to alter a ready-made garment to get it to fit properly, fuck that, I’ll make it myself. Not only will it be exactly the style/color/print/fabric I want, it WILL fit me the way I want it to fit. I was just lucky to be born into a family of people who can sew (I have uncles who can, and do, sew), but I also inherited the talent for it. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have that talent (probably be wearing awful stuff).
i agree with everything you’re saying, but the trouble comes when there isn’t a plus size store anywhere near you. for those of us that grew up in that world, the advent of online shopping was a blessing.
where i live now there are three plus size stores: lb, the avenue, and ashley stewart. and because we’re a fat city, there are several locations of each. BUT, i am of the “supersize” variety, so i can’t fit in the store sizes of ANY of those places anymore, so i am relegated to online shopping anyway (in only a fraction of the items available to size 28s. what, you could make the mom-jeans in a 30, but not the bootcuts?).
even if i were an 18 or 22, i prefer online shopping anyway so i don’t have to deal with the asshats in the stores and the poor customer service you mention (though i did have a great experience at lb early last week–she actually went in the back and found the item i wanted!!!!).
Well, you’ve inspired me to see what there is for in store shopping here apart from Addition elle, Pennington’s and Reitmans. Turns out there are two boutiques, I will have to check them out.
I just bought $400 of stuff from OSP, and returned everything but the bras and a swimsuit (that I had to alter). Unfortunately I used my Redcats card, so I couldn’t return the Avenue stuff to the store (I tried, but no luck), and had to spend $14 shipping it back….
I needed to read this right now because I needed to know I’m not alone in this frustration. I’m in the process of sending a dress that I loved back – I carefully checked measurements, and according to those it should have, if anything, been slightly snug in the bust. It was HUGE in the bust and shoulders, and I am not small there in the least. I’m both mad and heartbroken because the way the dress is cut it is not alterable and the color and shape and rest of the fit was ideal. Phooey.
I really wish that in addition to body measurements they’d give actual garment measurements and recommended wearing ease so people could make a more informed judgement call. But that would be work.
That is exactly the reason I don’t shop at onestopplus generally speaking. My last order was three very similar items with astonishingly differing sizing.
Yeah, I am worried about shopping online for my sister’s wedding. I have to have a solid black dress and thus far, have found NOTHING remotely like what I want or need that would fit me. I want to use Sydney’s Closet, but the items I am looking at are all NO RETURN NO REFUND BLAH! What kind of clothing store sells things that are no return no refund??!?
I figure if I find nothing in brick and mortar shops soon, I may as well order large and expect to have it altered.
The only plus-size shop within three hours driving is Target, so almost all of my clothes are bought online. It’s only been in last year, since I started reading Fatshionista (on LJ) and body positive blogs like this one, that I’ve realised that badly-fitting clothes are NOT MY FAULT! It seems so obvious, but I was falling into the trap of “my body is wrong” rather than “these clothes are not cut/sized/shaped for my body”. So thank you for helping with that!
I ordered a bunch of stuff from Woman Within, and in addition to it being INCREDIBLY cheap and shoddy clothing, the size charts were incredibly wrong. I had a sneaking suspicion they were wrong, so I ordered a larger size than was indicated, and still wound up with pants that I couldn’t get past my hips, let alone button up. I wound up losing money from the deal because shipping was not refunded for the original order AND I had to pay to ship them back. Terrible.
This reminds me of the statement, that if people are making it so hard for fat women to find clothing, maybe it means they’d rather us walk around naked.
So have any of y’all ever been to an online shop where the clothes were awesome and cute as hell and then BAM they have nothing above a regular, ‘ol, XL.
Not uncommon, huh?
I have emailed several different businesses to talk about why they should offer their stuff in bigger sizes. NOT ONLY do the businesses, when they respond, make idiotic excuses about their sizing but then when they respond, they seem to be so upset and take it so personally!
I’m pretty frank when I write these places; recently I contacted babywit.com and also alternativeapparel.com and just got the most ridiculous responses from them, all because I brought up that in the case of babywit.com it was egregious to market to mothers, especially new mothers, and then offer stuff in XS without offering plus sizes, too. And the alternative apparel, well, I said that it was contradictory for them to offer “organic”, “environmentally-friendly” clothing and yet promote an unhealthy image of women (you should go and check out their models.)
The guy from alternative apparel who wrote me back tried to appeal to me on a more complex level, but the MOM who created babywit just told me that I was wrong to accuse them of such a thing.
It’s infuriating!!!
Grrr. I just ordered a bunch of undies online from Victoria’s Secret’s PINK collection cuz I bought a bunch a few years ago and I love how they are cottony but don’t stretch out. So, as an inbetweenie with a big bum I still have always worn a small in most of their stuff and I knew I fit in a small in PINK so that’s what I ordered. I knew that they changed styles around a little, but didn’t expect to receive undies that only came halfway up my buttcrack! The material got a lot thinner and the cut got way smaller, which I really don’t get because now there are probably way fewer people at the top and bottom of the spectrum who don’t fit in them at all… come to think of it, though, that seems to be really common. I know I’m lucky to be able to fit into Victoria’s Secret and American Apparel, but tons of my friends who are only a tiny bit bigger than me can’t even shop there, which really pisses me off. And to reiterate, what the hell is up with changing the sizes of clothes? It’s like that Sweet Valley High thing.
I’m just impressed that you can go through dealing with online shopping at all. I’m petrified of even trying – I seem to have no idea what will really look good on my body. I’ve been known to try the exact same thing on three different times, saying to myself “No, I KNOW this ought to look good on me”, to find out it doesn’t. And then I don’t believe myself, so I do it again. And that’s in the store! I don’t even dare order something, because it’s 90 to 1 odds that it would have to go back.
I actually have no objection to Old Navy going online only; they never REALLY carried plus sizes in-store. You’d go in, and maybe they’d have a sparse selection of 18 and 20s on the racks. They never had everything in every size, and going into the store had become a total waste of time for me. At least now, I know I can get my size (22), and I’ve been pretty lucky with clothes there, especially bottoms. I keep more than I send back.
I’ve had really good luck with dresses on eBay, of all places. you might check there. With Alight, I send back better than half of what I order.
I hear ya, sister! The best we can do with online is order items in two sizes, just in case.