- Fashion is just fatphobic.
- [Narrator] Walk into any major retail store
and you'll hit a cliff at a size 10.
Brands that do offer larger sizes
are mostly into the fast fashion,
low quality category with clothing tearing after one wear.
The plus clothing that does exist,
doesn't actually fit the style and needs of people
in high-powered, influential positions.
The demand is there, but the industry is full
of excuses for why it hasn't kept up.
- There has been one way to be acceptably fat.
- [Narrator] Lauren Chan is the founder of Henning,
a brand catering to women's sizes 12 to 24.
Today we take a frank look at what it really
takes to build a luxury clothing brand for everyone.
(relaxing music)
- When I was a teenager, I was enthralled
with the beauty and escapism
and individuality of fashion,
but I never saw myself reflected
in the market and the clothing offerings.
There is a plus size ideal.
And when I used to be on set as a model,
the direction used to be called happy fat girl,
with flowy mumu type dresses,
soft waves, rosy cheeks, a big smile.
That is so not me.
I decided to turn my small public facing career
and my experience as a plus size consumer
into a brand which is now Henning.
Henning exists to fill the gap
in the market between the contemporary and luxury spaces.
We make timeless essentials that are well-made
in New York City that will last forever.
Henning is inspired by all of the things that I wish
that I could have worn during my career.
When Henning started,
we were making clothing very traditionally.
I learned how to make clothes the way that a lot
of factories and brands do here in the city.
You find inspiration, design your pieces,
source your fabric, make your samples, fit your samples,
have your photo shoot for your, all of your creative assets,
and then have the factory produce your orders.
I don't find that to be very efficient.
It's very wasteful to produce an order,
especially as a young brand
when you're still getting to know your consumer,
and have inventory or stock leftover that didn't sell.
And so I am really interested
in on-demand manufacturing
which is relatively new.
We found one factory, which is Tailored Industry
in Brooklyn, which makes knitwear on demand.
It is very brilliant, very complicated,
very data-driven work, but to summarize it,
it's basically like 3D printing sweaters.
And so with that technology
and the way that they have brilliantly set up their factory,
we can submit orders to them
as our customers submit orders.
If this was a factory of humans,
how many people
would be sitting in here for the same job?
- 100s really.
I mean, because you're knitting piece by piece.
In a sense like we are reducing some of the labor
and we're also cutting down waste
because we're not cutting it out, sewing it.
- I mean, you're cutting down waste
in so many ways.
Even though I considered myself an educated consumer,
I really did not know the effects that fashion takes
on the planet until I was immersed
in the garment making industry.
Typically, plus size fashion gets trends
like seasons after they happen in straight-size fashion.
It feels like we only deserve fashion
up to a certain price point,
threshold, quality level, and if everyone else has access
to super high luxury and couture, even,
and we get stopped here at fast fashion,
the message of that is that we only deserve so much.
While it seems like it's just clothes,
really what we're doing is sending
a message of cultural norms.
And I find it really exciting
that there are a lot of folks innovating
in this industry to make it more sustainable.
- My name is Kazuki Kozuru-Salifoska
and I'm a co-founder of a boutique fashion,
manufacturing, consulting firm
called Kedic Fashion Workshop.
We help designers and brands to make sure
that their clothes fit properly.
- It's Kazuki who is the party working
with the tailored industry folks.
I kind of come in at the beginning and design the piece,
but it's really a partnership
between Kedic and Tailored Industry
in the finite details of actual garment-making.
- A lot of the problem we see
that established brands have done wrong,
is that they take their existing pattern
and they just sort of grade it up.
If you're grading up from that straight size range,
the pattern itself doesn't have any depths.
So you end up flattening the woman's chest
and having excess fabric at that size.
Because if you look at a straight-sized dress form,
sort of flat and wide,
where she is more three-dimensional,
she is wider but definitely more three-dimensional
than she is.
You actually need to spend resources
and time to go into a larger size range.
And a lot of companies don't think that far.
- When designers make clothing,
there are still restrictions
with what gets made versus what will sell.
But when companies go to make plus size clothes,
those restrictions go from here
to like here.
Has to be flowy,
doesn't sit on the body, needs thick straps,
can't participate in a slip dress trend,
needs to cinch at the waist and suck her in,
and then go out at the hip
and create an hourglass silhouette.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And those restrictions are reflective
of the fatphobic ways that we have been telling
plus size women they can and can't dress for years.
So we shop reflectively of that fatphobia.
It's perhaps a blessing that I don't come
from the garment industry.
And therefore, I don't do things the way they've always
been done, just because that's how you do them.
The quality of the clothing is made to a level
that I think plus size women deserve to be served with.
We had a meeting with Leader Abrams
and we're talking about dressing her.
It is a distinct honor to be able to dress somebody
who has clearly changed the course of American history
and as human beings who exist in bigger bodies,
if we are able to internalize that,
we could go change the world in our own ways.
Plus size women aren't one kind of person.
We are multifaceted.
And we haven't really had clothes
that tell us that.
Women above the beauty ideal
belong in luxury fashion discussions.
They belong in Senate elections.
They can stand in their power and belong where they are
and look the part and communicate
that with their clothing.
The possibilities are endless.