Living large

Clothing company Torrid makes cool clothes for overweight teens. Its bodacious bras and extra-large camisoles help salvage fat kids' self-esteem. But do they also encourage obesity?

By Lynn Harris

Apr 6, 2005 | When Kathryn Squitieri, 18, was in high school, a routine shopping trip with friends was a journey into a special circle of hell -- you know, the circle where everyone is skinnier than you. "Oh God, it was horrible. You have no idea," says Kathryn, now a freshman at Brooklyn College, of her posse's mall safaris. "I hated shopping with friends. But I wanted to be like everyone else, so I went to all the stores with them and ended up leaving miserable or with stuff that I knew was too small --I'd buy it so they wouldn't think that nothing fit me. Or they would go into a store and I would you know, go get a soda or something. They'd be all excited and I'd just, like, sit there with nothing to do. It was really difficult."

Kathryn, 5 feet 2 inches tall, says she "wasn't as heavy back then" (she now weighs 180 pounds) and found herself too small and too young for Lane Bryant, which is persistently (and perhaps unfairly) known as the frumpy aunt of all women's plus-size clothing. What did she wear? "Long skirts, plain shirts -- whatever I could find," says Kathryn, who also occasionally sewed her own clothes. "Every once in a while I would come across something in Junior XL, and that would be OK. The whole thing was a big trauma."

That was before Torrid came to town. Torrid is the curvy kid-sister company to California-based Hot Topic, a popular punk clothing chain (insofar as a "chain" can be "punk") that netted $39.7 million last year. Now four years old, Torrid offers only plus-size clothing -- that is, only cool plus-size clothing -- to fashion-starved Junior XLs like Kathryn. "We believe that plus-size young women should have just as much opportunity to feel feminine, beautiful and sexy as their thinner counterparts," says Regina Woodhouse, director of marketing for Torrid. Translation: Anyone looking for stretch pants or muumuus will be disappointed.

Torrid is working lace camis, cute hoodies, saucy tees, flouncy minis, a rainbow of bodacious panties and bras (up to size 46 DDD). The combined effect is as if Gwen Stefani, Anna Nicole Smith, Queen Latifah, Pink and Carmen Miranda teamed up for a trunk show. Shiny, sparkly, often revealing -- with roomier-than-usual shoes, boots and even expanded necklaces and bracelets to match -- the clothes seem to say, "What fat?" rather than "I'll just be hiding over here in this caftan." (Torrid does, by the way, also stock more conservative clothes.) "Torrid is like the clothing equivalent of 'Buffy.' It seems like it's for teens, but there's also this underground of 30-somethings that's totally obsessed," says Wendy Shanker, the author of "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life" and an occasional freelance writer -- but not paid spokesperson -- for Torrid's Web site.)

Launched in response to overwhelming customer demand for clothes like Hot Topic's, only larger, Torrid has grown from six stores in 2001 to 76 today -- and has plans to open 45 more this year. (Hot Topic does not break down Torrid's sales figures separately and a company spokesperson would not disclose them.) What's behind its success? Deeply devoted customers who say Torrid has not only filled their closets but also salvaged their self-esteem. Kathryn made sure to be at the Torrid store in New York City's Staten Island Mall the day it opened in 2001. "Everything looked beautiful on me," she says, describing short skirts and corset tops she'd never dreamed of wearing before. "I was like, 'It fits! It's flattering! This is so exciting! Shopping is fun!' It made me feel terrific." She now works at that Torrid two days a week, not because she has to (she lives at home and, she says, "my parents are good to me"), but because she wants to. At the store on a recent Sunday, her supervisor had to stop her from helping a customer after her shift had ended.

"They say that two-thirds of America is overweight," says Torrid devotee Andrea Ward, 16, of Bridgewater, Mass. "So why don't they make clothes for them except for sweat pants and huge ugly shirts like my drama teacher wears?" Health and business experts follow Andrea's logic, agreeing that Torrid represents a welcome, even overdue, tap into a surprisingly underserved market. "It's about time," says Judith S. Stern, professor of nutrition and internal medicine at the University of California at Davis and vice president and co-founder of the American Obesity Association. "Overweight and obese kids are actively discriminated against. The fact that they couldn't have cool clothing just made things worse. We've made a lot of progress."

But the idea's not just nice, say market trackers; it's a smart business move. "Torrid finally wised up to the fact that there's an awfully large market for clothes that are not only plus-sized but also stylish," says Rob Callender, trends director of Chicago market research firm Teenage Research Unlimited, noting that teens generally have money to burn. They spent $169 billion last year, 39 percent more than they did in 1997.

Among teenage clothes shoppers, retail research group NPD Fashionworld says, "size availability" is the "number-one factor that drives teens to stores." And, more to the point, size unavailability drives them nuts. According to the industry trade group Cotton Inc., 29 percent of 16- to 24-year-old women wear at least a size 12 -- and 61 percent of them complain that they can't find clothes in their size. According to NPD, the plus-size market in general -- the fastest-growing segment in the apparel industry -- is expected to hit $47 billion this year, up 49 percent since 2000.

But all this demand, some add, has a downside. People like Stern are deeply concerned about there being such a large -- and by all accounts, rapidly growing -- plus-size teen market to begin with. A few critics even go so far as to say that stores like Torrid -- precisely by catering to, and even glamorizing, the plus sizes -- could be contributing to the problem.

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