Size Inclusivity, Body Diversity and Brands Today
How A New Consultancy is Helping Brands Create An Equitable Relationship With Their Curvy Customers and Employees
Beth Hitchcock has been clear about her life’s work for over a decade: To empower women. With her extensive knowledge of the fashion industry and her talent for styling all shapes and sizes, she is dedicated to encouraging women to love and accept themselves fully. After getting her start at Lucky Magazine, Beth went out on her own as a stylist and plus-size model in New York City.
She remained steadfast about her beliefs that no style or trend is exclusive and that women of all sizes should wear what makes them feel confident and strong. Over the years, however, Beth watched as brands—in fashion and related industries—made numerous mistakes in their efforts to connect with a plus-size audience. These observations lead her to start Fluffi, a body diversity consultancy for brands seeking an equitable relationship with their curvy customers and employees.
The Continuum sat down with Beth to talk about Fluffi, how attitudes about size inclusivity are constantly shifting, and what that means for brands today.
Fashion is such a difficult world to break into. How did you get your start?
I went to the University of Cincinnati for Fashion Design. It was a five-year program that had a co-op component. Every other quarter, you would have an internship in the industry. So, before I’d even graduated, I got to work in New York and San Francisco, and I even got to do a textile program in Tanzania.
Ironically, through those experiences, I realized that I didn’t want to go into design. My goal was to work for a magazine. I moved to New York without a job and lived on an air mattress in my friend’s hallway for a few months while I looked for something. I ended up getting an internship with Conde Nast at Lucky Magazine. After maybe two weeks, they hired me as a fashion assistant. I loved the photoshoot side of things, especially how quickly you could see your results. With design, it can take a whole year of process before you see the clothes getting made, but with a photoshoot, you can start to see what it will look like right away.
I was at Lucky for two years and then decided I wanted to build my own career as a stylist.
It feels like every romantic comedy has a character who is a stylist, but most of us don’t know anyone with that job in real life. Can you tell us what you really did in that role?
It’s definitely different than how it’s portrayed on TV. It’s a very physical job. I did a lot of work for companies that were not clothing companies, like Verizon and Dell. For these kinds of photoshoots, it’s the stylist’s job to shop for the clothes and bring them to the set to dress the models. Then, typically, there’s a fitting day. Everybody comes in, and you have racks and racks, all organized by size or by model, and you work with the art director to choose the one or two outfits each of them is going to wear. It’s a lot of puzzle-piecing together what works. A lot of the job is shopping, which can be fun, but the other part that they don’t show you in movies is when you have to return everything that didn’t end up getting used. That’s always a pain.
You jumped sides of the camera at one point and ended up doing some plus-size modeling yourself. How did that happen?
As I was developing my styling career, I started working with a lot of plus-size brands, and I was seeing all of these beautiful women who were shaped like me, and they were so confident. Just being around that energy really helped build my self-esteem.
I don’t think I was comfortable in my skin as a plus-sized person until then. I was probably already thirty. I got sick of the story that I kept telling myself that when I lost weight, I would do more things and stop hiding myself. I mean, I didn’t go to pool parties for years because I didn’t want to be in a bathing suit, and I wasn’t really dating because I wasn’t confident about how I looked.
There are so many layers to it, but I literally woke up one day and decided I was sick of hating my body and not living my life to the fullest because of my size. I wrote about it in an Instagram post. I didn’t think that many people would see it, but I guess it really resonated with people. I got a lot of messages thanking me.
One of those people was the Creative Director at Lane Bryant, who knew me as a stylist. She said she wanted to put me in a campaign as a model. It came out great. I had never modeled before, but I’d been watching some of the best models in the industry for years, so it was like I had a built-in modeling education. Lane Bryant continued to put me in campaigns for a few years after that, and I went on to get an agent and started doing more work. I haven’t done much modeling since the pandemic, but I really did love it.
“As I was developing my styling career, I started working with a lot of plus-size brands, and I was seeing all of these beautiful women who were shaped like me, and they were so confident. Just being around that energy really helped build my self-esteem.”
As a plus-sized person, did you ever feel like fashion wasn’t meant for you?
I didn’t really think about it; I just liked making cute outfits. Growing up, I was always the person trying the trend; if it was new, I was going to get it. I didn’t look like everyone else, but back then, I didn’t think about it; I just wanted to be cool. Even in college, when I worked with Old Navy and Ralph Lauren, I’m not sure I realized that they weren’t making clothes in my size.
The first time I thought about it was when I was at Lucky Magazine. I was in charge of a project called “Cute Outfit of the Day.” I would look around the office for an editor or an assistant who looked good and then have them come to the studio to get their picture taken. Then, I would post the outfits online. I think that’s when I realized that I was the biggest person in the office. I was the only big person featured in our cute outfit series.
It’s funny; I grew up in the height of diet culture and was always trying to lose weight, but it wasn’t until my twenties, when I was already working, that I realized how the fashion industry was contributing to that.
You describe the fashion industry’s interest in plus-size women as a pendulum. A few years ago, it seemed like every brand was courting this audience, and now you say interest is waning. Can you explain?
Women's bodies have always been treated like a trend, and like with every trend, it comes and goes. A few years ago, it swung one way where everyone was all on board with putting every kind of body in a campaign and having big girls on runways, but I think it’s swinging back. I worry that we’re going into the Ozempic era when skinny is going to make a comeback, and people will go back to thinking that if you’re not skinny, you’re not healthy. We can’t treat bodies like a trend; you can’t change your body on a whim.
Even when everyone was jumping on the plus-size bandwagon, they did it in a way that further marginalized bigger people, in my opinion. There was one plus-size body type that was “in style,” whether that was an hourglass shape or a flat-stomach-big-boobs-big-butt physique. And you still had to have a thin-looking face. It may look more inclusive, but it’s an unhealthy way of being inclusive.
“We can’t treat bodies like a trend; you can’t change your body on a whim.”
Say more about that; what mistakes do brands make when trying to engage with plus-size consumers?
I’ve worked very closely with a lot of brands over the years. I’d be in meetings with design and merchandising teams, and I hear a lot of disturbing commentary and see a lot of mistakes get made. I realized that most often, it’s a lot of skinny people on these teams making decisions for bigger consumers and not understanding the nuances of what it’s like to shop for or wear larger sizes.
Most brands start out going up to a size twelve or maybe a fourteen; then, when they decide to make a plus-size line, they create something new. Loft did this at one point. It’s a huge mistake. Customers want what you’ve been doing already, just in bigger sizes. When they do try to make bigger clothes, a lot of brands don’t have the right grading scale. A grading scale is how you size a pattern up or down. Most designs start at a four or a six, and then there’s a scale of how many inches to subtract, make it a zero or a two, or add to make it a ten or a twelve. But once you get past an eighteen or so, you really have to make a whole new pattern, or it’s not going to fit right. We didn’t even learn how to do this in school.
I’ve also seen brands use plus-size models even when they don’t carry clothes for them. Zara got called out for it a few years ago when they launched a denim line. They used Precious Lee, who is one of the top plus-size models. She was the face of the campaign, but she wears a size sixteen, and Zara doesn’t even carry that size.
And it’s not just in fashion; other brands who want to show their size inclusivity will use plus-size models in photo shoots, but they’ll make the same mistakes we used to see in eighties and nineties TV. Like they’ll show a family having fun together, and it will be clear that the thin people are the married couple with kids, and the one fatter person is the aunt.
This is what your new consultancy, Fluffi, is all about. Tell us the idea behind it and what you’re going to be doing.
It’s about this disconnect between what brands venturing into the plus-size world or size-inclusive world are creating and what the consumers really want. It occurred to me that I’d been in basically every part of the fashion world—from design to editorial to styling—and I’d worked with a lot of size-inclusive brands and that I could help brands get it right.
I started with the idea of educating fashion brands about creating new grading scales so they can make plus-size clothes that fit and then helping them creatively market their clothes in a way that builds community rather than alienates bigger consumers.
Fashion brands will be a big part of what Fluffi does, but I realized that the education portion is huge and could be helpful to executives and marketing teams outside of the fashion world. We still have this built-in fatphobia in our society and negative attitudes around bigger people that keep getting perpetuated. I want to help companies fight this not just in their marketing to customers but also internally by creating a company culture where employees of all sizes feel welcome.
I see it as DE&I training around size, and my ultimate goal is to help create a bigger, better size-inclusive future for everyone.
October 31, 2023
