Are you one of the many women who’ve walked into a store, picked a beautiful garment off the rack only to be told that it doesn’t come in plus size or horror of horrors, that “we keep our plus sizes out the back, I’ll go and check for you?” But with the average 35-44 year old Australian woman measuring a size 14-16, and the typical plus size range starting at just the next size up, from size 18, why is the clothing industry continuing to minoritise the majority?

Roughly half the population is women, all of whom wear clothes, and with the average woman’s dress size sitting more or less in the middle of the size chart, why are the sizes at the upper end of the scale set apart as ‘plus size’?

Well, it's got a lot to do with the now out-of-date sizing conventions still being used today from generations past. But more interestingly, is that women's clothing from a size 18 up requires more focused fitting techniques to look and feel good on the body. That’s not to say they just require more fabric. There are aspects of a garment’s design that require greater adaptation to allow for the curve of fuller figure bodies.

When creating a garment, the style is first planned out in a single sample size, as flat pieces on paper, known as a pattern. Other sizes are then created by moving up or down the size scale based on specific measurements. This is called pattern grading. And up to a certain point, this works. But as a woman’s curves grow fuller, so body proportion and shapes change which traditional grading is too ‘straight’ to allow for. 

The next step is the fit test. Now what would be the point of grading for fuller figures and then not trying them on a curvy woman? At L&F we wear test our garments on sizes 12, 18 and 22 women to ensure they all fit well and look good across the size spectrum.