dear American Apparel.
(Not to place you as the scion of t-shirt marketing, but, hey! you kind've are.)
I'm offering to you a proposal to innovate another size: the extra medium.
See, some of us girls are shaped differently. Some of us do not cut the willowy silhouette you model after. Some of us are larger in some places and smaller in the others. Quoth the Sir of Mix-a-Lot: "little in the middle but she got much back."
Extra Small? Check. Extra Large? Check. Wither the Extra Medium?
Look, I'm the median of women's sizing. This means that I wear a size 6 in some brands, a size 12 in others, and everything in between. I'm not saying the fashion industry is going to suddenly wise up and give us realistic, modern, proportional sizing for women of all shapes. I'd just like another option to choose from in all the madness.
Extra medium, to my mind, wouldn't be a size between medium and large, but more of a "chick" shape. You know, enough for awesome logo t-shirts to fit across various expanses of boobage without stretching out the letters, long enough to fit over pants without plumber's crack, and a waist that nips in a bit to give it a shape.
Theory gets this, and so does BCBG, but spending $50 on a shirt isn't really my (ha!) style. I'd like a wider range of options for cute, stylish logo t-shirts, like the ones I get from Mule Design:
I won't go off on a tear about the fashion industry. It's an industry, as ridiculous and creative as a corporate practice can be. As an industry, fashionistas of all stripes struggle with eating disorders at the front of the house, slave labor at the back of house; sexism, racism, and homophobia just to name a few. I'm not here to critique that. Go on with your bad selves.
I'd still like to propose the extra-medium: it sounds good, it fits well, it's a helluva good marketing practice.
Loves and x-large kisses!
Ginevra
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I really dig American Apparel, primarily because I'm a layman-level labor rights activist. They're one of the very few companies I'll buy anything brand new from (everything else goes through the Salvation Army--you know, to wash the blood money out of it).
As you might know, the U.S. military has a PX (post-exchange) on most bases--it's sort of a government-subsidized mall for military families. And of course, there's a four-star general who's actually in charge of the whole PX system.
Anyway, when I was stationed at a base in Florida, I saw a flyer one day, saying the head honcho of the PX system would be on base to get feedback from anybody who cared to show up at his little shindig. So I did a couple of things--first, I went through the entire men's department, looking at the labels of every single garment on sale. Out of over 100 items, only one was "made in the USA"--and hell, it was a leather jacket made in the Marrianas Islands, which is its own can of worms. The other thing I did was contact AA and Sweat-X (a now-defunct company started with seed money from the Ben & Jerry's venture capital fund), and get wholesale pitch-material packages from them.
So the guy comes, he gives is little talk about positive growth in PX services and whatever, and then opens the floor. I showed up in a dress uniform, and spoke for about 10 minutes, trying not to sound too self-righteous about the idea of including labor rights in our criteria for what we're willing to buy and sell. I gave his staff the info, and... well, you know, nothing changed. But at least now he knows that weird shit goes on in Florida.
totally with you on their labor practices. It makes them so much more awesome, and a default for shirt-printing, but still. Extra Medium is all I'm sayin.
Then again, maybe AA is just not marketing to the right people? Are they trying to be elitist like that and not make stuff that the rest of us can wear?