Hey, Stores: Where's My Size?

Sixty-seven percent of women wear above a 14, but you’d never know it from what’s on most racks. Lauren Chan investigates.

- Lauren Chan

Confession: I haven’t bought a piece of clothing from a brickand-mortar store in a year. It’s not because I’m making major contributions to my savings account or that I’m too millennial to shop IRL; it’s because I just gave up on trying to find well fitting, fashion-forward, size-14 pieces in an actual store. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” agrees Ashley Taliento, Glamour’s photo director, who also wears a 14. Like many women our size, she shops mostly online—but wishes there were more options. “I want to walk into a store to buy a Proenza Schouler skirt or Topshop jeans, and I’d spend the money in a second if it was there in my size.”

That’s the problem: It often isn’t there. “Retailers shy away from stocking larger sizes,” says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD, a market research company that focuses on retail trends. “There are old beliefs that women who wear plus sizes are less likely to buy clothes, so stores focus on expanding beauty and accescsories, which have higher sell-through rates.” In fact, plus-sizes make up only 16 percent of all apparel sales—a shockingly low figure considering that 67 percent of women in the United States wear a size 14 or above. Some retailers use these numbers as a sign that bigger women don’t love fashion—but Cohen and others (ahem, me) argue that women aren’t buying because stores aren’t offering. “If you build it, they will come,” he says. “You’d think that if women are getting bigger, retailers would adjust sizing to reflect that. Not enough stores do.”