I often complain that one of my biggest gripes about trying to clothe myself, as a plus size girl, is finding dresses and tops that fit my smaller cleavage (something that I don't think companies will ever manage!), but my second biggest gripe is finding jeans to fit me perfectly. I don't think that I have ever own a pair of jeans that were even close to a good fit, for a variety of reasons:
1. Jeans tend to be "hipsters", which means that they are designed to sit on the hips. However, when you naturally have large, they never sit comfortably on the hips, instead they tend to fall down, and it's impossible to wear a pair of jeans without a good belt. And even then, sometimes a belt doesn't always help.
2. As I also have short legs, I have trouble getting the right length of jeans that also fits around the waist, because apparently if you're fat, you don't have short legs!!
3. I've also found that jeans that fit me around the hips often don't fit me around my thighs either, they're either far too tight or far too baggy.
Thus, for a long time I have felt that a change in the way women's clothes are "sized" has been overdue, because women are not black-and-white when it comes to size. Everyone who is a Size 14, for example, does not have the same proportions between their boobs and their hips as other women.
You might remember that a while ago, I blogged about Evans' attempts to help women to determine what their shape is:
A campaign that helped me to determined that I'm a pear-shape. Anyway, this long ramble is leading to an email that I received this morning from Evans, relating to my Pear Shape. I thought that it was great that Evans had emailed me relating specifically to the body shape that they'd helped me to find out, because it's nice to know that they appear to be keen to help women like me to find the perfect clothes for our body shapes, as it seems to be getting more and more difficult. And I'm really intrigued, because Evans are slowly creeping up in my estimations of them.
Basically, Evans have created what they think is the perfect jeans for the pear shape:
The most important factors here, for me, are most definitely the fact that they fit higher on the waistline, so hopefully they wouldn't fall down so much on me. But, I'm also glad to see that they've taken note of the smaller waistline, in comparison to the hips, as the body naturally narrows from the hips up to the cleavage, and hopefully there won't be any gaping in that area, that would also encouraging them to fall down.
Although it isn't mentioned on the image above, I was keen to see if they will be stocking these jeans in other leg lengths, and I was over the moon to discover that they offer Short Length jeans (as well as Long Length for the taller plus sized lady too!).
Nevertheless, I did have one thing that I wanted to question: In the email that I received relating to these jeans, the email actually started by telling me about their 2 for £30 Jeans, and yet when I was looking at these Pear Shaped jeans, there was no mention (that I could see) relating to this offer, which seems incredibly misleading.
Here's a screen grab of the email, so see what you think:
Does the "P.S." not imply that these jeans should be part of the 2 for £30 offer??
It's not until you look at the image really closely, that you notice the little noe, that is very similar in color to the background (so, if you are colour-blind like my other half, you really are screwed), that states the pear shaped jeans are not in the offer. So, I definitely find this to be misleading.Whilst browsing the clothes for Pear Shapes, I was very impressed with some of the tops that they recommended for the body shape, but unfortunately, the prices are still proving to be incredibly steep, in my opinion. £29.50 for a top very similar to one that I picked up for more than half that amount, from one of their biggest competitors? Hmmm...!
Needless to say, I am impressed overall with the effort that Evans have gone to, in order to create clothes that fit body shape, rather than size, however, I do think that they need to put a little more effort into how much they charge. Okay, so the clothes are nice, but when they're charging more for the same as another company that is selling them a great deal cheaper, well I think they're making a mistake. I also think that they need to be clearer as to what is included in their "offers", as they could potentially be misleading.
Unfortunately, with my Project No Jeans this summer, I probably won't be picking any of these jeans up for the time being anyway. But, it's still interesting to know that they're there for when Autumn comes around...maybe!
What do you think of Evans' efforts to create clothes for body shape? Is it enough?
