Canadian plus seller Lola and Gigi’s does what too few Canadian stores do: it makes well-designed plus clothing from elsewhere in the world available to the Canadians. While this is a wonderful and much needed service, this unfortunately defines them as middlemen: important to their Canadian shoppers, but perhaps overlooked by those of us to the south of them.

So imagine my delight at finding a new label beneath some of their clothing options: “exclusive.” Lola and Gigi can now stake their claim on design trends, with some pieces only available with them.

This seems like another newish variation on the coat dress; there’s something very sweetly 1940sish about it.

The frill-wrap shirt doesn’t seem very frilly to me - thankfully - but it does have a nice “poet/pirate” feel to it that is sufficiently undercover for office wear.

I’m also beyond delighted to see them take a step forward in plus size textiles, offering the environmentally friendly options of bamboo and soy fabrics - in clothing plus women can actually wear.

I may just have to drive over the Minnesota border plus a few hundred miles for a shopping trip!