In Fashion, Bigger Is Now Beautiful

By Janice Castro

In the world of women's fashion, less is usually more, meaning that attention has long focused on the American consumer who wears size 14 (roughly 5 ft. 4 in., 150 lbs.) and under. Now U.S. manufacturers and retailers are beginning to discover that more can be more too. They are taking increasingly solicitous aim at a zaftig audience that wants to look good in anything from size 16 (usually about 160 lbs.) to, well, a lot more than that. Along the way, these merchandisers are reaping impressive profits by catering more assiduously to a roughly $10 billion sector of the fashion market. Says Nancye Radmin, founder of the Forgotten Woman chain of 17 shops for larger customers: "Everyone thinks that when a woman gains weight, her pocketbook and brain shrink. This just isn't so."

Radmin, who found that she could no longer buy chic clothes after gaining 80 lbs. during a pregnancy, opened her first store in Manhattan in 1977. Sales climbed swiftly to $18 million by last year, up from $12 million in 1985. Says Miriam Cyrulnik, a trial attorney who shops at the chain's store in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center: "In the old days, you had to buy a lot of big T shirts. If there was something you liked, you had to just hope it would be in your size at the end of the rack."

Other big-is-beautiful outlets are drawing an equally enthusiastic response. Lane Bryant, the first U.S. chain to specialize in large sizes for women, has undergone a startling transformation since it was acquired in 1982 by the Limited, the Columbus-based women's apparel conglomerate (1986 net sales: $3.1 billion). The 87-year-old Lane Bryant has abandoned its self- admitted former image as a purveyor of shapeless smocks to focus on younger customers who are interested in big-scale style. The new formula is working. The number of Lane Bryant stores has tripled so far, from 214 in 1982 to 600. An additional 190 outlets are scheduled to open during the remainder of 1987.

Fashionable department stores have climbed on the outsize bandwagon. Bullock's, a pricey Western chain of 22 stores, has moved the large-size Bullock's Woman boutiques in most of its outlets from obscure floor locations to splashier quarters. Since 1985, sales in the shops have steadily increased. Bullock's has now made the boutiques into a separate store division. In March a 3,000-sq.-ft. Bullock's Woman store, devoted to sizes 14 to 24, opened in a Las Vegas mall. The retailer plans to open at least two more stores of the same type.

In 1985 Manhattan's trendy Bloomingdale's moved its large-size Shop for Women from a little noticed spot on the same floor as the maternity department to a more prominent space that is twice as big. Later this year the store plans to add specially styled lingerie, bathing suits and coats to the sportswear featured in the bustling department. It will hire full-figured salesclerks to help make customers feel more at home.

What is behind the trend? Says Ira Quint, president of Lane Bryant: "There are two immutable forces that always work for us. One is called aging, and the other is gravity." In fact, nearly half of all women in the U.S. wear size 14 or larger. The proportion may well grow: though more Americans may be eating a healthier diet than they once did, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has calculated that in 1985 Americans were consuming 7% more food per capita than they were ten years earlier. Meanwhile, the wave of women entering managerial and professional ranks has greatly increased the demand for fashionable clothing in all sizes -- along with the income to pay for it. Some clothing experts estimate that fully 45% of women wearing size 16 or larger are in the free-spending, fashion-conscious 25-to-35 age bracket. Their purchasing power will continue to expand as the U.S. population ages.

Faced with those figures, some of the world's flossiest manufacturers are reaching out to the bigger customers with cashmere and silks, gabardines and fine cottons. Last year Designer Albert Nipon sold $5 million worth of his new Dimensions line, for sizes 12 to 24, to such stores as Bonwit Teller, Dillard's and Marshall Field's. Givenchy anticipates wholesale sales of $4 million this season for its pricey Givenchy en Plus line in sizes 12 to 24.

All in all, says Carole Shaw, editor in chief of BBW: Big Beautiful Woman, a glossy, color fashion bimonthly for larger women, the apparel industry has changed considerably from its thin old days. Then the belief was, as Shaw puts it, that "as you got fat, you got poor." Now the feeling is that nothing fosters growth -- and profits -- like a rich diet.

With reporting by Cheryl Crooks/Los Angeles and Janice M. Horowitz/New York