In my opinion, Lane Bryant should be looking for a new President.
In a recent article about Full-Figured (read “fat”) Fashion Week in The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/06/AR2010070604552.html?sid=ST2010070605571) Mr. Woolf said that Lane Byrant’s customers are most concerned with comfort, then fit and finally style. “She’s not there on the cutting edge of fashion. She might be a year behind.”
WTF?
Apparently Mr. Woolf thinks fatties are most happy when lounging around in muu-muus and sweats.
The only reason fatties might be a year behind in fashion would because cutting edge fashion is not available in our size! Fuck you very much.
After the company’s debacle over too much cleavage in its TV ad, Lane Bryant is wondering whether it should “step into the current cultural contretemps” (read fat acceptance). Woolf says, “Should we be doing more?” I say “DUH”.
Fatties United! 
RE: The “Good” Fattie
Does this mean that somewhere there are similar rules for being a good “thinnie”? That if you’re a size 6 but your idea of a normal diet is McBurgers, fried everything & gloppy shakes, you’re a “bad thinnie”? Funny how thin folk seldom mention what THEY consume unless they’re diet/exercise fanatics pushing their agenda at everyone else…oops…NOT everyone, just the fat people. Would be interesting to find out the ratio of “bad thins” to “bad/death fats” out there, wouldn’t it?
Wow, what a joker!
Come the revolution and all that…..
Mr. Woolf said that Lane Byrant’s customers are most concerned with comfort, then fit and finally style. “She’s not there on the cutting edge of fashion. She might be a year behind.”
It could be the HAPPIEST Lane Bryant customers are the ones who add little to their wardrobes and prefer to have their own style instead of following fashion. There are things to be said for doing this, including “saving money”.
On the other hand, if he thinks there aren’t ANY fat women who aren’t interested in the latest trends and fashions, he’s wrong. They just know better than to shop at LB.
“comfort, then fit and finally style”
He may be right. But it doesn’t follow that customers don’t care about style. What we have here is a Hierarchy of Clothing Needs. (Someone should draw up a triangle for this!) It goes something like this: Any clothing / Affordable clothing / Comfortable clothing / Clothing that fits / Appropriate clothing / Stylish clothing. Feel free to rearrange or modify the entries. Clothing availability, for example, might be in there somewhere, or maybe it’s implied.
There may be a lot of personal variation in the above list, i.e., people may be willing to tolerate lower levels of comfort in order to wear something stylish, such as shoes with 7-inch heels. If you have a mainstream body, it is easier to go higher up on the hierarchy; similarly if you have the money to spend.
If you have a meager choice of clothing, you are not going to be as picky about the fine points. How many of us have found clothing so hard to get that when we do get something, we buy several and wear them until they fall apart?
I don’t necessarily want to be up on the latest styles. But I want that to be MY choice, and not something forced because the styles just don’t exist in my size.
“She might be a year behind.” Actually I’ve been thinking alot about this sentence lately. Although I do much of my shopping online, I never considered visiting Lane Bryant’s site until recently. I am Norwegian, and if I’m gonna pay for shipping from the U.S. while risking that something might not fit, I want it to be something of a fair quality, and from all the thing I’ve read in the Fatosphere I never got the impression that that was the case. But as I was listening to an old Fatcast on fatshion, I heard it said that LB will often be the only place a lot of American women have to shop. Since only having one place to shop for plus sizes is something quite common here in Norway, I felt I could relate, and wanted to take a look at what they had to offer. I was not impressed. Seriously, the accessability in Norway is worse than it is in the States, but at least our chain (zizzi.dk) comes out with items that are mildly interesting, even if it tends toward the flowy. And, having read the quote above before, I thought; well, yeah, if that is what you give them to wear then she will be a year behind, won’t she. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out if the chicken or the egg came first in this situation.
Oh, and about embracing FA, or at least a positive view of plus sized people as a chain, what else are you gonna do?!! Those are your customers, OF COURSE you should advocate that they are fine the way they are.
OK y’all I strongly recommending checking out zizzi.dk
The clothes are wonderful and they use plus-size models (not really fat, but at least curvy).
I want to know when they are coming to the US
i worked at lane bryant for 4 long years and it was 4 years too long. i thank them for giving me a job when i didn’t have one at the time but working there was hell.
i hated the clothes there. before the manager hired me, she knew me as someone that always walked in the store calm and left just pissed off. i’ve been stuck with tshirts and jeans. i hate the styles there. every year, they bring back the styles that NOBODY wears unless its 80% off. they not only need to fire the president, but they also need to fire the fashion person. and why are guys working for a womans store? it just doesn’t make since. i’ve been lane bryant free for 5 months now. nothing surprises me about lane bryant. they hate their customers. they hate their employees.