Fashion in a fair to middling world

I absolutely love fashion and on the flip side I absolutely hate fashion. Fashion is this amazing thing that allows you to express yourself and stand out or blend into the background and hide when you’re having one of those days. It can be beautiful, it can be thought provoking, it can be sensual, it can be fun, it can be hideous, but it can also be dangerous and a little scary!

I am a happy and proud fair to middling woman but when it comes to fashion I can sometimes be made to feel slightly less happy and slightly less proud. I am average looking, I am an average dress size, I am an average height, and I have around an average sum of money to spend on fashion. This would suggest that I should have quite a nice relationship with fashion, average body type and a bit of money to spend on clothes, but NO! This means I actually have an incredibly complex relationship with fashion.

There are a number of plus size shops on the high street and online these days and I think that is brilliant. Having plus size shops suggests that all the other clothes shops are for everyone else who doesn’t class themselves as ‘plus size’ right? Wrong!! Don’t get me wrong these other shops absolutely sell clothes in my size but they are not aimed at me or other people of my size, no way! The clothes in these shops are aimed at the 8 foot size 0 mannequins and models they use, not at Mrs Fair to Middling-Average!!

Every time I see a poster board when I walk into a shop I think “Oh that dress is pretty cute.” My husband in his wisdom encourages me and says “Yeh you should try it on.” I then try it on and wonder how the tight fitting garment that makes me look like a sausage, or the loose fitting tent I have just draped over my body represents the image I saw on the way in. I then get sad, maybe a little angry, tell my husband “it’s fine I didn’t like it anyway.” And move on with slightly more rounded shoulders and a sulky face. If I find a pair of trousers that actually fit my waist, my backside and my legs I literally do a little dance and buy them on the spot, even if I kinda don’t like the print. It is like finding rocking horse s**t, and then I think how can that be I am nothing special I am just normal so why does nothing fit me?? I then go into the whole maybe I’m not normal, there must be something wrong with me, how can this muti-billion pound industry be wrong?? But I’ll tell you now, it is the industry that’s wrong, not you!!

The other thing that gets me every single time is dress sizes, wow what a minefield that is! You are looking at some dress in a shop, the sales assistant comes over and says “Hi, what size are you looking for?” Every time the only answer can be “How the hell should I know, I have just been in 3 other shops and I was a different size in each of them.” And don’t get me started with jeans, they have a size such as 10 or 12, ok I get that, then you go somewhere else and they are European sizes so maybe 36 or 38, then finally you hit another shop and they are size 27 or 29. What the hell does this mean and why don’t men have this problem? Every shop my husband goes to he buys size 32 trousers/shorts and a medium on the top, EVERY SINGLE SHOP Grrrrrrrr!

Now I may just sound like a ranty woman who basically can’t work out her own dress size and constantly picks up the wrong thing to take to the changing room. But I think actually you know exactly what I’m talking about, the feeling of waking up in the morning and being excited about going clothes shopping only for all that excitement to be ripped away from you half way through you visit to the second shop.

Fashion is there to make us feel good and I think the industry needs to wake up, they have thought about plus size women, they think about petite women but they need to realise that all that crap in-between doesn’t work for everyone and they need to do better.

I would kill to see a model that looks like me on one of these posters when I walk into a shop so that I can confidently try something on without that voice in my head saying “But you’re not a size 8 sweetheart that will look crap on you.” Why don’t shops arrange clothes based on what would suit different body types? Some shops have started doing that for jeans but if more did it for maybe dresses that would be amazing.

We need to take fashion back ladies, we need to work together to bring back the joy of shopping for clothes and following fashion. We need more variety in magazines, we need more average women on Instagram, we need to stop watching the Devil Wears Prada and believing the only way we can have a place in fashion is to drop a dress size. We need to make the industry change, and if we can’t do that we need to share our experiences, stop feeling ashamed, and realise we are not the problem here. We can do this, together.

If you love and loath fashion in equal measure like me then stick with me on my journey of fair to middling fashion. There will be lots of talk about saving money on fashion, sustainable fashion, why the hell everyone in the industry is super skinny or plus size, and I will definitely throw in the odd rant. We may not be able to take on one of the biggest industries in the world but together we can build a community and support each other!