Ralph Lauren – they do offer plus size clothing

No, you can't be alive and look like this

There’s a lot of hubbub over Ralph Lauren taking an already anorexic woman and Photoshopping her image beyond all reasonable proportions, as seen here. This may be a message about the RL attitude towards women’s bodies. It might just be a sign someone is really bad at Photoshop and there was only so much time before the project deadline. It’s probably some combination of the two.

I’m going to say this, as I sometimes do: anorexia is bad. And regardless of size, one should not wear clothing created by designers who have contempt for the people that wear their clothing. While I examine such negative attitudes and designs in the plus market, they are in all markets.

But something else to keep in mind: large design houses don’t just work with one designer. For instance, I’m pretty sure that while RL may have some oversight, it might not be his hand in the plus designs – and while the plus clothing is sturdy but staid, some of it’s…kind of nice. Not horrible choices if you’re up to a generous size 22 by Ralph Lauren house measurements.

Some are insane the way golf clothing is insane, and the plus size clothing is generally on the dark-and-neutrals side (someone still subscribes to the false adage about black being slimming)  but even so…I’d mix it up with something from Torrid and make it my own, if I had the budget. And the clothing can easily pass my three years test.

So, decisions, decisions: boycott because of messed up anorexia model, or quietly support and hope the money vote wins as it always does in the end?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under Fashion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.