Torrid, the largest plus-size specialty retailer in the US, posted a 14.3% sales decline last quarter, and executives point to one driver: GLP-1 drugs reshaping who buys extended sizes and how fast.
Emarketer data revealed that by December 2025, only half of H&M’s assortment fit what the industry calls its average consumer, down from 86% the year before. Old Navy, L.L. Bean, and Ralph Lauren also quietly scaled back the plus ranges they built during the last decade’s inclusivity push.
None of that changes the underlying math. A Forbes report highlights that sixty-seven percent of American women still wear a plus size, and fashion is already treating a drug-driven dip as permission to retreat from a majority it barely served to begin with.
Key Insights
- Grading Issues: Linear grading fails to capture biological diversity by scaling small-pattern geometry mathematically.
- Fashion Exclusion: High fashion maintains exclusionary signals through runway casting that favors narrow sizes.
- Retail Challenges: Retailers pivot on manufactured risk, using oversupply as excuses to retract inclusivity efforts.
- Tech Limitations: AI sizing tools prioritize flawed data over necessary design corrections in garment construction.
- Mid-Size Gap: The arbitrary divisions between straight and plus categories create a retail void for common dress sizes.
Disclaimer: This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information. It is not intended to be professional advice.
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Sample Sizes Still Rule
The word sample size sounds neutral, but it has always meant one body: for most of the last century, a size 6-8 frame that patternmakers built entire collections around before grading up or down.
Grading does not redesign a garment. It just stretches the same shape mathematically, so a dress engineered for a 36-inch bust gets wider seams and longer darts rather than a rethink of where fabric should sit on a fuller frame.
Ebenezer Butterick industrialized this system in 1867 for home sewing patterns, and ready-to-wear inherited it wholesale. Extended sizing still follows the same grade rule today, which is why so many plus pieces feel like enlarged photocopies rather than clothes drafted for the bodies wearing them.
Runways Ignore Plus Sizes
Vogue Business tracked 9,584 looks across 230 shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris for its Spring Summer 2024 size inclusivity report, and plus bodies, defined as US size 14 and up, accounted for 0.9% of them.
Mid-size models, roughly a size 6 to 12, fared only slightly better at 3.9 percent. Karoline Vitto and Chopova Lowena tied for the most size-diverse shows that season, both smaller labels rather than legacy houses.
Ferragamo and Mugler joined the size inclusivity rankings for the first time, which the industry treated as a milestone rather than a baseline.
When over 95% of runway looks still cluster in a size range most women have never worn, casting has not caught up so much as stalled at a photo op.
Retail Still Falls Short
Old Navy’s Bodequality launch in 2021 folded plus sizing into the main collection at the same price point, calling it a human-centered redesign rather than a plus range bolted onto the existing line.
Less than a year later, Gap Inc. pulled the program from 75 US stores and 15 Canadian stores, blaming oversupply in extended sizes and undersupply in the middle sizes.
The framing put the failure on shoppers rather than on a company that had never built the forecasting or floor space to support the sizes it announced.
A rollback dressed up as a realignment is still a rollback, and plus-size customers noticed the difference immediately.
The Origins of Plus Size
Lane Bryant coined the term plus-size as a marketing term in 1922, advertising Misses Plus Sizes for women needing more room in the bust , waist , and hips , with sizes 16 through 30 at launch .
Five years later , the brand dropped misses from its ads entirely , and by 1953 a North Carolina newspaper ad for the label Korell had shifted the modifier from clothing to the woman herself , running the line the plus-sized woman .
That shift from describing a garment to describing a body is where much of the category’s baggage began . A term built to move inventory in 1920s still functions as a euphemism a century later , which says less about the women it labels and more about how reluctant retail has always been to just call sizing what it is .
Designers Prove Demand
Christian Siriano has cast plus-size models on his runway since his first collection in 2008 and now regularly fits size 30 clients for red-carpet work , a size range most houses still treat as a special order .
He has said plainly that restrictions are the antithesis of art , framing designers who refuse to dress larger women as artists working with self-imposed limits rather than any real constraint .
His business proves that an audience exists . Glossy has reported that the US plus-size market is close to $200 billion , a figure large enough that Siriano’s approach reads less like activism and more like ordinary commercial sense .
The gap is that his runway is still covered as an anomaly rather than treated as an industry standard it should already be .
Fit Starts With Design
Image Credit: CrizzyStudio/ShutterstockGood fit begins with how a garment is designed , not simply with the size printed on the label . Clothing made for broader range of body shapes often requires adjustments to proportions , pattern pieces , fabric behavior , and construction rather than simply enlarging or shrinking an existing design .
As more brands expand their size ranges , focus has increasingly shifted toward creating patterns for different body types from beginning . While this approach may require additional manufacturing resources and more complex production processes , it generally produces clothing that fits more comfortably and moves more naturally than garments made by scaling up single base pattern .
The Market Is Proven
Image Credit: Prostock-studio/Shutterstock
US spending on women’s plus-size clothing was $21.4 billion in 2017 , with survey data showing that more than quarter of American women browse category regularly , according to Coresight Research .
CDC figures from period put obesity among women 20 and older near 38 % , number retailers routinely cite investor decks justify expansion . Yet extended sizing pitched internally pilot rather funded initiative spending data already describes core business .
That said , Old Navy’s own Bodequality stumble complicates purely cynical read , showing demand data inventory execution do not automatically align even when market opportunity real provable paper .
Even Plus Size Varies
Image Credit: PeopleImages/Shutterstock
Even 67 % figure anchoring this piece has contested history . Plunkett Research first cited 67 % –68 % American women wearing size 14 or above back in 2012 , number firm later confirmed still stands behind adjusting only slightly aging population rising GLP -1 use .
Mys Tyler’s US survey put plus-size share at 54 % instead while identifying size 16 as single most common dress size country . The gap between those figures reminder that plus-size never had single fixed definition measurements varying depending whether brand starts counting at 12 ,14 or16.
The Plus Size Price Penalty
Image Credit: Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock
Some shoppers have noticed identical clothing styles can cost more larger sizes smaller ones.
Retailers use tiered pricing often point factors such higher material use increased production costs supply chain expenses.
While these explanations may account part difference practice drawn criticism consumers believe larger sizes should not automatically carry higher price.
The issue fueled broader discussions about fairness apparel pricing transparency whether inclusive sizing should treated standard part clothing production rather premium option.
AI Can’t Fix Poor Fit
Image Credit: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Apparel returns run 20 % -30 % industry-wide incorrect fit consistently cited leading driver sometimes accounting majority all returns tracked retailers.
Rather investing better pattern development extended sizes many retailers redirected spending toward AI sizing tools cluster shoppers past purchase return behavior estimate fit.
The tools can shave returns by 20 % -30 % controlled tests solving chart built same flawed grading assumptions piece opened with.
An algorithm trained bad-sized data will always recommend confidently still wrong which turns construction problem into data science budget line instead pattern room one.
Size Falls Between
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