Formal Fashion for Plus-Sized Women
There’s a common misconception (read: nonsense) that having a formal wardrobe that is playful, flattering and genuinely exciting stops at a certain dress size. It doesn’t. What stops is the high street’s patience, because mass-produced clothing is cut for a mannequin that very few of us have ever met. The problem was never your body. The problem is clothes that were not made for it.
Sizes Are Arbitrary. Measurements Are Not.
Walk into three different shops and you will come out three different sizes, which tells you everything you need to know about how much a number on a label means. A tailor doesn’t work in sizes. We work in measurements: yours, taken properly, including how you stand and move. When a garment is made to measure, words like “plus-sized” stop mattering altogether, because the garment is simply your size, everywhere at once. Shoulders, bust, waist and hips are allowed to be four different stories, as they are on almost everyone.
Silhouettes That Work With You
Great formal dressing is about proportion, not concealment. Structured tailoring is a curvier figure’s best friend: a jacket with a defined waist, well-placed darts and a proper shoulder line brings shape and presence in equal measure. Wrap and A-line dresses flatter almost everyone, and a sharply tailored suit is as striking on a size 20 as a size 8, arguably more so, because curves give cloth something to do. Deep, saturated colours, bold prints, satin, velvet: nothing on that list has a size limit. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are selling you their limitations, not yours.
Buy for the Biggest, Tailor the Rest
If you are shopping off the rack for a formal occasion, our advice is simple: choose the size that comfortably fits the largest part of you, then let us tailor the rest. A dress that fits your hips and gapes at the waist is an afternoon’s work for us, and the result looks made for you, because by the time we’ve finished, it is. It is the single best-kept secret of well-dressed women at every size.
You Deserve Better Than “It’ll Do”
Formal occasions are precisely the moments you should feel spectacular, not merely covered. Whether that means altering a dress you already love, or starting from scratch with our dressmaking and tailoring services, come and talk to us at the Shoreditch studio. Bring your ideas, bring your favourite photos, and let’s make something that fits the body you actually have, beautifully.
