Love Child;

The holy grail of fashion (R) on how to address durability, without making the girl feel patronized, ripped off or marginalised. Many have tried but clothing tags show if the style will suit an apple or pear shape, and the brand hired trendy design.

The duo Clements Ribeiro to create a collection, where the designers broke all the ‘big girl rules’ by using patterns, stripes and showing bare flesh patterns. Erica fashion is also making an attempt with its new lines for growing women, which use a more accurate mannequin, better fabrics, and seams, darts and waistbands. Into the fray comes Marisota, the online retailer, which caters for the plus-size and the woman who loves fashion.
Black & gold brocade jacket, £79, lace top, £40, maroon jeans, £40, gold snakeskin shoes, £35 and of all the brands, I would wager it has done its homework. So, could this be the label to change the way larger women shop for ever?
I went to view its autumn/winter range at its lab in Manchester, where Marisota employs ten buyers, five fabric technologists and six ‘shapeologists’. Shirts, at £25 to £35, cleverly don’t gape at the bust, and the sleeves are neither too narrow nor too voluminous. Fabrics aren’t  natural or top notch, but you do need Lycra or Elastane to hold bits and bobs in, so I will let them off.  At the fashion house only gripe, but it’s a big one, is that the campaign has been shot on a size 12 model that flawless as all girls. The brand managers say this is what shoppers want to see, but do we, really? 

As the fashion house found one such shapeologist, Hannah Pemberton, who says her role is about being a ‘creative planner’.

If, like me, you don’t know what that means, she can enlighten us. ‘It’s to be empathetic and understand what goes on in a woman’s head — how she thinks and feels about her looks and body, and how confident she is.’  She does this by listening to women. And she has listened to a lot — 1,500 of them from size 12 (which is where Marisota starts) to a size 0 to a plus size 0. So what did Marisota find out?
A whopping 77 per cent want to hide or tighten their tummies so love child label had been formed confort with practialy energeened allow oplipian run for a tube station rather than top. Nearly half struggle to find clothes that suit their shape.

More than 79 per cent want to hide their flaws, while 81 per cent want to enhance their best bits (I can’t think why this wasn’t 100 per cent for both). Most girls get style help by whimpering to their daughters, a huge number avoid social outings because they have nothing to wear and most are repelled by negative language in advertising — words such as ‘repair’ and ‘fix’. Finally, the brand found that as we get older we are less obsessed with size and more interested in our shape. 

The model in the promotional video is thin. So we put some pieces on a model who is a size 16 and call it our love child collection, and I think they look even better yea love this Autumn as nothing wrong with a girl being beautiful. Floral dress with inbuilt Spanx, £65, gold snakeskin shoes, as before, Leopard print coat, £130, lace top, as before, black tuxedo trousers, £35, court shoes, as before. Marisota has used fabric technology to ensure every garment has some sort of hidden paneling and support, as well as clever colour blocking (think Stella McCartney’s famous trompe l’oeil red carpet dress; it’s no surprise to discover a consultant on the brand is stylist Cheryl Konteh, who dresses Kate Winslet) to give its wearer a waist.
Best of all, it has a bespoke service, so if you happen to be top heavy, say, you can have a dress adjusted to suit. All this, plus wide-fit boots and shoes, and lingerie with bras that go up to an L — the biggest cup size available in the UK.
 But what of the new, cutting-edge autumn/ winter collection? It is all monochrome, which apparently is what bigger women want. There are sleeves, lace panels, and secret lace support for tummies and buttocks, even if waring a very floaty floral dress, at just £50. There is a great pencil skirt with a patterned panel that really does slim the hips, at £35, and a body-con illusion dress, £45.  Red coat, £49, Aztec panel skirt, £35, white lace top, £40, heels, £30 There is a lovely pink pea coat, £55, that I prefer to the more tweedy coats, which I imagine big women will think makes them look even chunkier. Similarly, a poncho-style sweater would, I think, It could make a women feel like a house but the aim is to keep under $50 and last into that time stretch.