Bringing a Personal Touch to Plus-Size Fashion<br />Most physical stores with plus-size apparel do not “offer a great experience,” Ms.<br />Chase said, so Eloquii is focusing on fitting-room aesthetics and other amenities<br />Gwynnie Bee had a pop-up store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan<br />that “went really well,” Ms. Hunsicker said, adding that her company is trying to determine what role a store plays in its business model.<br />“I sat in on hundreds of meeting with designers, and this customer was never part of the conversation,” said Mariah Chase, an industry veteran<br />and the chief executive of Eloquii, an e-commerce site devoted to plus sizes.<br />Dia took out a full-page ad in during New York Fashion Week last February, encouraging designers to look anew at the market with the line “Fashion she can’t wear is becoming a<br />bit unfashionable.” The gamble paid off: Ms. Boujarwah said the ad had led to two new lines, one with Ms. Wilson, the actress, and the other with the designer Nanette Lepore.<br />This was a problem for many women that I could play a role in.”<br />The scarcity of larger sizes stems from a deeply rooted stigma in the fashion industry — many<br />designers either ignore or reject requests to offer their styles above a certain size.<br />Other e-commerce sites, like Stitch Fix, have also begun to offer larger sizes.
