Designer Anna Scholz is 6'1" and wears a size 20, so she knows what it's like to be the wearer of larger size clothes, too. She designs clothing for size 12-28.

Designer Olivia Harper makes clothes specifically for women of size. Her things are manufactured in the USA. Don't sweat the price tag, it's what clothing should cost when not made in China by slave labor.

Svoboda jeans are designed for women who fill them out nicely and are a generous size 12 and up.

When customers demand quality, a store will meet the need. I'm not surprised at the stretchy pants, oversized t-shirt market. And it's not limited to fat girls with no taste. Plenty of skinny girls are similarly aflicted.

I don't want to say I can sympathize, because I'm not overweight myself, but I do have quite a few larger friends. And it seems to me that when they talk about how much they hate all the clothes available in their size, what they're really saying is they hate their size itself. It's inherently a lot harder to design clothes that larger people genuinely look good in, and that's something no designer...not even one who totally embraces her own size like Beth Ditto...can change.

Basically there's a reason all fashion models are rail thin...for example, one friend who is 5'9" and I'd guess 32-28-32 can wear absolutely ANYTHING and look great. As a much shorter hourglass, I have maybe half to 2/3 the clothing options she does…I can't wear sack dresses, babydoll tops, boxy jackets, or anything that doesn't fit fairly close to my waist...mainly because it makes me look heavier than I am. The larger and more pear or apple shaped a woman gets, the fewer and fewer options are left, until at some point it's no longer about looking good, just less bad.

Re: the alleged "fat girl uniform"...I went to jr. high in a small poorish Midwestern town where the 80's lingered into the mid-90's, and we ALL wore stretch pants (with stirrups! gahhh!) and long, baggy, gaudy sweaters...I agree, this style needs to stay dead!

"Just sew your own clothes?" This is a bigger challenge than just learning how to thread a needle.

1. Unless you are lucky enough to live in a city with a textile district (NY, LA, London, Hong Kong, etc), your fabric choices are limited to what Jo-Ann Fabrics or the Walmart craft department has to offer, since they have squeezed out most of the mom and pop fabric stores. This means, forget any natural fiber *(except for quilting cotton), or any high-quality (read: durable, non-pilling, non-fading, non-oli-slick-glossy) high-quality rayon or poly. But yes to lots of crappy stretch-knit and awful satin.

2. Unless you know how to draft your own patterns, you are limited to what the major pattern catalogues have to offer. Butterick and McCall's (which are practically indistinguishable), Simplicity, and Vogue. Each of these companies have major fit/sizing issues, most of them are decidedly limited in offering anything "plus size", and all of them follow the current fashion trends (and most of them not very well ....)

3. Unless you have a dress form made to your measurements, you are going to need a friend (who understands construction at least as well as you) to help you mark the inevitable alterations needed.

All of this takes time and money. Yes, you can do it, and yes, you can make some pieces you will treasure for years (if you chose the right fabric, the right pattern, and got the construction right), but to create an entire wardrobe this way, without a fashion house behind you, is fantasy.

It's times like this that I think what a pity it is that traditional skills like sewing and dress-making aren't taught to girls anymore. Just think - if you could make your own clothes, you wouldn't have to whine and pule about how utterly awful the available clothes are, would you?

(And don't whine about how impossible that is. I've made my own clothes in the past - BY HAND, no machine. One advantage is style - I can do my own thing. The other is longevity - those items are still with me, some of them over twenty-five years old, precisely BECAUSE they were made by hand and thus are not nearly as flimsy as the stuff sold in stores.)

Gee, why am I not surprised by this diatribe? Seems like an awfully trivial topic to waste so much space on.

And no, I'm not thin. AND I live in Hollywood. So I do know a little something about being looked down on for my weight. And you know what? I STILL do not agree with this article.

I LIKED 80's fashion. The supposedly "ugly" and "insulting" clothes that are being moaned about here were actually freakin' COMFORTABLE. Big tunics and sweater dresses were easy to get in and out of (still are), moved easily with my body, and didn't bind me up with too-tight seams in painful places. The colorful, playful nature of the designs was fun, too.

These bitchy whines only carry weight with those who actually want to torture themselves with the latest "fashions", whether they are actually practical and comfortable or not. Me, I've never given a fuck for the opinion of whatever Miranda Priestly bitch-maven is ruling the fashion roost this year. If it's comfortable, practical and catches my eye, I'm all for it. Just as happy in a peasant skirt and work shirt, sweat pants and t-shirts, big sweater dress or even, YES GODDAMMIT I'LL SAY IT - a caftan.

Which, by the way, are also way comfier than the kind of ultra-skinny, heroin-chic bullshit that exploded in the 90s - you want ugly by-gone fashion trends? Take a look at the dull-colored, sloppy, self-hating horseshit that was being peddled in the early 90's. I'll take bright geometrics and cat prints ahead of that crap ANY DAY OF THE WEEK, thanks.

Kate, 99% of the time I absolutely agree with you, but not this time.

First, the collection's not really aimed at people like me and you, who want what you call "nice, normal, grown-up clothes." It's for girls in their teens and twenties, and as people above had said, the 80s-style stuff is completely on trend for them. Even if it makes those of us who lived through it once already wince.

Second, I think you may not realize just how incredibly dire the options are for fats over here in the UK. Especially younger ones. No Torrid, nothing even close, not even an Old Navy equivalent. The (very few) chains that carry plus sizes are aiming squarely at a much older market, with the exception of New Look. You think it's hard to get nice normal grown-up plus size clothes in the US? It's a freaking shopping paradise compared to the UK. So for there to finally be something aimed at the kids of clubbing age, that is a real accomplishment.

Third, stop fixating on the damn kitten t-shirt and the face sweater. The cropped jacket and the dresses are nothing like 1985 K-Mart (and I remember it well).

Basically, yeah, now fat UK teens and twenty-somethings can wear trendy stuff just like their not-fat peers, and get it in a high-street chain. Better yet, it's trendy stuff that doesn't fit their thin friends, inverting the usual shopping experience. Good for them. I wouldn't buy it, but I wouldn't buy the similar 80s-retro stuff that is all over the high street here. Ditto's not insulting us or being hipster-ironic -- we're just not even on her radar.