Cheap Chica's Guide: Plus Size Fashions

"Fashion Is Foremost Inspiration"

Willie D

Bra Measurements: Finding Your Perfect Fit

(Pictured Above: Bra Set on sale for $9.95 at Henry & June Lingerie)

Wearing the wrong bra size is a huge fashion faux pas that can result in extreme back and shoulder pain. If you are a woman who has never been fitted, you are not alone. Most women don't know their true bra size and suffer as a result. However your suffering ends today! I'll show you how to find your true bra size in 3 easy steps.



Step 1: Measure Your Band Size

For best results you'll need to wear a non-padded bra and use a soft measuring tape. Hold the tape measure around your back at band level and bring it forward, just above your bust. Make sure that the measuring tape is snugged around your band without it being too tight. The resulting number is your band size (If the number is odd, round down to the closest even number). Remember this number.

Step 2: Find Your Bust Measurement

Next, you'll need to measure completely around the fullest part of your bust (at the nipple level). Again - make sure that the measuring tape is snugged around your bust without it being too tight. The result will be your bust measurement. You'll need to remember this number as well. If this measurement falls on the 1/2 inch, round up to the nearest whole number.

Step 3: Finding Your Cup Size

Now it's time to put the numbers I asked you to remember to use. Subtract the band size (step 1) from the bust measurement (step 2). This number will equate to the letter of your cup size.

Bust Measurement - Band Size = Cup Size

For example, if your bust measurement is 34" and your band size is 32, you wear a B Cup. Alwaysforme.com provides bras for those with bigger cup sizes

Here are some things that you should be aware of:

The center panel of your bra should always sit directly against your skin between your chest. Your breasts should fill your bra without spillage. Also your bra shouldn't lift as a result of movement. It should fit and feel comfortable whenever worn - which means no band imprint on your shoulders. If your index finger cannot move between your body and bra straps freely, you should adjust the straps immediately for both safety and comfort. Its important that women get a bra fitting twice annually due to weight gain and loss which can effect both your bust and band size. For more bra fitting tips and best bra deals visit Henry & June Lingerie. Remember: Don't let your bra wear you - Wear your bra and do so comfortably!

"Fashion Is Foremost Inspiration"
- Suzanna

Plus-size Fashion Dilemmas

Source: By Ruth La Ferla

This month, a couple of years after Beth Ditto complained about the lack of plus-size fashion in Topshop, Arcadia plans to unveil a collection that Ms. Ditto designed for Evans, the company’s plus-size division. Available in the United States on the Web, it highlights cutting-edge looks like a corset dress and a cropped biker jacket.

The collection is the latest in an outpouring of fashions aimed at trend-driven, round-figured teenagers and young women, a population that has long echoed Ms. Ditto’s complaint that it is ignored by most merchants and brands.

Other stores and designers have picked up the message. Forever 21, a purveyor of cheap chic, introduced its plus-size line, Faith 21, this spring. Target recently began offering Pure Energy, exuberantly patterned dresses and tops for young women. Those follow hip niche labels like Karen Kane and Kiyonna, which are sold at boutiques.

All the lines see potential profit in offering stylish alternatives to the ubiquitous track suit. From a business perspective, that makes sense: the customer base is increasing, as health authorities have long pointed out. Some 17 percent of teenagers are overweight, according to the surgeon general’s office, more than three times the rate of a generation ago.

The market for youth-oriented plus sizes (usually 14 to 24) showed strong growth a couple of years ago, several years after the fast-fashion chain H&M entered the business. (H&M has since dropped its plus-size line, for reasons it would not disclose.)

Last year, sales of plus sizes to girls and young women ages 13 to 34 reached $5.8 billion, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm.

With consumer spending falling everywhere, that momentum has been lost: Sales declined 15.3 percent for plus-size shoppers 13 to 17 and 10.1 percent for those 18 to 34 in April and May, compared with the period a year ago, NPD says.

Plus-size lines aimed at older women have also suffered; chains including Ann Taylor and Old Navy have removed larger sizes from stores (they still sell them online).

Faith 21 was introduced “because our customers were asking for larger sizes, and to fill a void in the market for trendy and fashionable plus-size clothing,” said Linda Chang, the senior manager of marketing for Forever 21. It includes some 250 styles.

Smaller stores are also catering to shoppers who want figure-hugging fashions like their thinner friends. “Some of those girls feel like they have the brio to pull off a fitted look,” said Stephanie Sack, the owner of Vive la Femme, a plus-size boutique on fashionable Damen Avenue in Chicago. She confided that when she was 20, “I would have choked somebody to get my hand on a studded belt to fit me.”

“When you’re fat you stand out anyway,” said Annie Maribona, the shop’s founder and part owner. “It’s really important to go all the way and do something fun or even outrageous with your clothes.”

Stores as diverse as Kmart and Lord & Taylor have dispensed with conventional big girls’ “dos and don’ts,” offering the hothouse colors and exuberant prints, the ruffles and flounces of their so-called straight-size counterparts. Even horizontal stripes, once a fashion sin for the overweight, animate some looks in Kmart’s Piper & Blue collection.

“I’ve noticed lately that they are trying to make big sizes more into style,” said Kathy Salinas, as she considered a zebra-striped Piper & Blue tunic at a Kmart in downtown Manhattan this week. “You see that at regular stores, not just the plus-size stores, and that’s a good thing.”

Round-figured young women have found inspiration in popular culture. Ms. Ditto, who settled her girth on tiny gilt chairs at some 10 fashion shows this year, along with the actress Jennifer Hudson and the singer Adele, all appear in full-figured glory in the current issue of Elle.

The glamorously curvy Jordin Sparks captivated viewers on “American Idol,” then moved on to a recording career. On Stylista, a reality show on the CW network last fall, a curvy contestant named Danielle competed for a job as a junior editor at Elle.

More than tokenism, such fashion and media tactics seem born of a conviction that larger young women have become more self-accepting. “They are inclined to show off the parts of their bodies they love,” said Ms. Sack, the Chicago retailer. Pushing the trend is a broad movement of fat acceptance among academics, anti-bias activists and some psychologists. “It’s important to reclaim ‘fat’ as a descriptive, as even something positive,” argued Ms. Maribona of Fat Fancy.

"Fashion Is Foremost Inspiration"

- Suzanna