Several weeks ago, before I vanished on vacation, the good people at B & Lu contacted me about reviewing some of their fine wares. Sure, I said, always happy to test drive a new dress in the interest of making sure y’all are well informed about fatshion. I chose a couple of items and, working from the size chart, asked for them in a 5X. Based on having seen my copious outfit photos, B & Lu was dubious that I needed that large a size, since I don’t always seem to photograph accurate to my real-life fatness. However, I was pretty sure I needed the biggest size available, so we agreed I’d try the 5X and if it was too big, we’d reconvene and cross that bridge together when we got to it. The site owner struck me as pretty fantastic in a general customer service sense, so I felt good about this right away.

Hence, I got the Gretta dress in emerald and the Avery dress. The Gretta dress is pretty great - the color is gorgeous and the fabric is soft and comfortable. In fact, it reminds me quite a bit of the first B & Lu dress I ever bought, a knit burgundy surplice-top deal, which I literally wore to tatters. The Avery dress is adorably retro and eye-catching and comfortable as well. However, my problem, as usual, is with the size. The Gretta dress fits pretty exactly, but the Avery dress is a bit on the small side.

Now, I am consciously not a person who gives a shit about the size on the label. As long as a garment fits appropriately, I couldn’t care less how a manufacturer marks it. So this isn’t really a question of vanity so much as it is a question of predictability. B & Lu is pretty adamant that their garments are made in true plus sizes, and not the deceptive “junior plus” range common amongst many trendy and inexpensive plus-size shops, which tend to run at least a size small, if not more. And yet these 5X dresses fit me, or just barely at that - they fit in a 5X, and under normal circumstances I don’t actually wear a 5X. I wear a 4X or 3X (depending on manufacturer), quite reliably. According to most standard (i.e., non “junior plus”) plus size charts, a 4X is roughly equivalent to a 26/28, and a 5X to 30/32. So technically these dresses should not fit me; they should be a size too large. My problem with this is not OHNOES A 5X FITS, WHAT OF MY VANITY!!! My problem is that this can be misleading for people who actually wear a standard 5X or 30/32. My problem is on behalf of the folks who see “sizes to 5X” and think that this includes them, when a closer inspection of the measurement charts for each item - which, in B & Lu’s defense, are extremely useful and include information specific to the individual garment in question, no doubt to avoid misunderstandings - may reveal otherwise. It’s true that some of those 5X dresses might run truer to size, but that was not my experience, and my experience is all I have to report on.

If you wear a 3X or smaller - which I suspect is the majority of you reading this - then B & Lu is a great option, and well worth a look. They’ve got cute, trendy and youthful stuff at reasonable prices - plus a solid selection of dresses, which can be challenging to find in numbers in plus sizes - and their customer service is reliably excellent. Also, the people who run the business are really fabulously dedicated to producing plus-size clothes for a style-starved market. Thus, they make a worthy contribution to the slim plus-size pickins in the on-trend arena (particularly considering Lane Bryant has apparently decided that producing clothes that are even marginally stylish is no longer a good marketing plan), and I give them huge props for that. My only problem, and it’s the one I can’t let go, is that they don’t make enough of it in my size. According to a recent accounting I did (with math and everything!), of twenty-nine dresses on the site, only six went to a 5X (that’s not counting each color of the same dress separately).

In the broader cultural discourse, I feel like all I hear from all quarters, all the time, that people my size or fatter cannot possibly dress stylishly and attractively, since evidently once a body hits a certain mass, then making it look good in clothes becomes a physical impossibility. I call bullshit on this. Extreme fucking bullshit. The only reason people my size or bigger cannot dress stylishly is because stylish clothes to fit us do not reliably exist, or because the ones that do are inaccessible. The only reason people my size or bigger cannot dress stylishly is because we are constantly informed that our bodies have placed us past salvation, stylistically-speaking, and this information is reinforced by our exclusion from readily-available and affordable fashion. We are discouraged from experimenting with color or with fit. This means many of us never take the risks necessary to develop a personal style that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Once upon a time, years ago, I ordered stuff from B & Lu frequently. And I loved it! I had two dresses from them in particular that I wore until they virtually disintegrated. Since they’ve narrowed their sizing range, however, I’ve stopped perusing their site, as it’s just too frustrating and annoying to have my options limited even at a plus-size site. So when I originally got the email from B & Lu, I sort of felt like a heartbroken girlfriend who’d been sitting tearstained and morose for hours while the object of my affection was too engrossed in the Xbox 360 to notice. B & Lu! I want to like you! I like the mission statement on your site! I want to believe you’re doing your best in a difficult market!

And I want you to like me back, B & Lu! I like and admire your Commitment to Dresses in particular. I want you to like me back, enough to make lots and lots of dresses in my size. Truly, I feel somewhat sad to write this post, as I’m sure a diatribe on unpredictable sizing is not what the nice people at B & Lu were looking for when they contacted me. But if I weren’t completely honest about my experiences with plus-size retailers, then my opinion wouldn’t be worth much.

In conclusion, smaller fats should love B & Lu. You will have to enjoy their bounty in my absence, however, as for the time being I’m going back to avoiding their site, as it pains me too greatly to find cute dresses only to discover they can’t accomodate my fat ass.

Awhile back, SWAKdesigns popped up as a subject of conversation on the Fatshionista community over on LiveJournal, as a relatively new and heretofore unknown option for plus-size clothing. Lots of folks seemed happy with it, and honestly, I looked at the site once or twice and then stopped, because it seemed like the offerings in my size were sorely limited if not altogether nonexistent. So when the site contacted me recently, I sort of shrugged and almost didn’t go check them out again, since I remembered feeling frustrated the last time I was there.

Good news, though; in a climate where many plus-size shops are trimming back their extended sizes (I’m looking at you, Fashion Overdose and B & Lu), SWAKdesigns now has items that run from 1X all the way up to 6X! Considering the challenges in finding any kind of selection for extended sizes, particularly at affordable prices, this is fantastic news. Also, they’re kind enough to collect all their extended sizes on one page, here, instead of making fatter fats hunt around for the larger sizes, only to get their hopes up on an item and then to discover said garment only comes up to a small 2X. More than that, each item’s page has a size chart that gives item-specific measurements, from the standard bust-waist-hips to length and armhole circumference (a freaking godsend for those of us with arms and shoulders that make fitting sleeves a constant challenge).

The offerings at SWAKdesigns lean toward the most popular plus-size silhouettes - think lots of surplice-style tops - and the widely-beloved matte jersey. There’s a variety of stock basics (t-shirts, knit gauchos) and more overtly stylish offerings. If I have a criticism, it’s that their designs occasionally seem too varied and not particularly cohesive as a collected group. However, this sort of variety works for some folk just looking for comfortable garments that they also feel good in, so who am I to say.

For my part, I got to test out three of their dresses. I know, I know, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Dress the first was the Desi, in black, in a 4X. I was truly impressed by the quality of this garment - it’s cotton (plus!) and fully lined (with stretch poly jersey, but still) and the construction is impressive for the price. The bust runs a little small, and by this I mean the bust fits me and my smallish bosom with little room to spare. Or possibly it’s meant to be extra-cleavagey and I simply don’t have the cleavage to supply. Either way, I dig this vaguely boho, peasant-style dress a whole lot and it’ll definitely become an easy staple in my wardrobe, particularly in warmer weather, something on which I can rely on those mornings I just want to put on something comfortable that looks good without thinking about it too hard (as I am oft wont to do.) Frankly, this dress makes me stare bleakly out at the frozen heaps of old snow outside my windows and wish I had a beach vacation coming up. It’s that kind of dress. The kind you want to wear stretched out in the sun with an alcohol-laden frozen drink in your hand.

Dress the second was the Leona. I chose this dress sort of on a whim, and to see what their jersey garments were like, even though it’s not really my personal style (though I do know someone whose style it totally fits, nudge nudge). I was mostly seduced by the colors of the stylized floral print. The Leona is a pretty standard print-jersey dress, on a par with what you’d find at your local Torrid. The fabric is lightweight and forgiving, as jersey is, and the fit is right where I’d expect a 4X to be - I had worried a little that SWAK’s stuff might be fakeout junior plus sizes, but this is totally not the case. In my experience with all of these garments, a 4X is a 4X, and that’s that, though if you’re shopping with them I’d still encourage you to check the size chart to be sure (if you don’t know your measurements, measure a favorite garment around the bust, waist, and hips to get an idea of how much room you need). All in all, the Leona is a cute dress that has one of those cuts that’s flattering across a wide variety of body shpes.

Dress the third was the Alicia. First, I have to give a little backstory here: back in the days of The Old Torrid, in the pre-pinkening, they had a really ridiculously popular Dickies shirtdress. As I recall, I believe it was called the “Nurse Betty” dress, even though that would make no sense because it was only available in red and black, which are not generally colors nurses are known to wear. But whatever. I digress. Once Torrid sold out, they went for insane prices on eBay for a year after. I had one of these coveted dresses in black - I actually still have it. It is, frankly, a near-perfect stretch-cotton poplin shirtdress. Mine was getting a little faded, however, after years of wears and washes, but I couldn’t give a thought to retiring it. That is, until recently, when I was running into the stairwell at work (I take the stairs a million times a day not to Be Healthy, incidentally, but because I am way too impatient to wait for the elevator) and somehow my dress caught on the door handle and… rip. I mean RRRIP. EPIC RIP. I had to pin the thing closed from the waist down for the rest of the day (yes, ultra-professional, I know). I was crushed! Disproportionately so, because y’all, I’d had that dress forEVER and I’d never seen another quite like it - a simple, straightforward, a-line, above-the-knee-length, fat-girl-fitting shirtdress.

Enter the Alicia dress pictured to your left, there.

This is basically THE SAME DRESS. On SWAKdesigns’ version, the skirt flares a tich more (not a bad thing) and there’s also a tie belt (which I can take or leave), and the SWAK dress is a slightly thicker fabric (a VERY good thing), but it’s essentially the same dress. I was ridiculously gratified to find this dress. My only complaint is that A) it doesn’t go up to 6X so fatter fats can also enjoy it and B) it doesn’t come in a million colors, because I would totally buy this dress in a million colors and wear it all the damn time. I’ve written here before about my troubles finding simple cotton shirtdresses and so this is an excellent find for me.

Of course, these dresses will inevitably find their way into Outfitblogging posts, so you’ll see them in real-life action on me before long and you can judge for yourself.

When I first got the request from SWAKdesigns to check out their offerings with the idea of writing a post about it, I was sort of worried: What if I hate everything? But I can honestly say that overall I have been pleasantly surprised by my SWAKdesigns experience, particularly by their variety of sizes and plentiful real-measurement info on each garment. I’d love to see them venture out into more dramatic and edgy territory, style-wise, but having a good source for the basics can’t be understated, especially when so many of the items in question go up to a 6X. Did I mention that they have free shipping on all US orders?

If you’ve had an experience, good or bad, with SWAKdesigns, please do share it in comments.

I’m totally going to go hug my Alicia dress now.

Hey, you - do you have a plus-size retail business? Would you like your shop profiled in a feature review on this obnoxious, politicized, occasionally profanity-strewn blog? If you answered yes to both these questions, by all means contact me at lesley@fatshionista.com, or using the contact form on this site, and let’s chat about it.

Every year I go through this. When temperatures start to fall here in Boston, I immediately start longing for a selection of delicious, well-fitting sweaterdresses to wear. Finding said sweaterdresses is rarely a problem. Wearing them, on the other hand, frequently poses a challenge. The sweaterdress most naturally benefits a body that is curvy in the traditional sense: a body with bust and hip measurements that are relatively proportional, and some kind of identifiable waist in between. However, I am not about to let the fact that I’ve got basically none of the above flag my enthusiasm. In fatshion, where there’s a will, there’s always a way.

Since I’m not naturally built for sweaterdresses, I need to rebuild them for me if I’m going to wear them. I do this with belts. Specifically, I do this with belts belting the narrowest beltable bit of my body - a couple inches under my bustline.

HORRORS, I hear you exclaim. Yes, the underboob belt’s got a bad rap in recent years. Yes, the underboob belt’s been a little overused, a little played out, a little last-season. I hear you. I don’t care. It works for me.

For example: Not long ago I ordered this dress from One Stop Plus. When it arrived, it was basically a sack. This is a common problem I run into with items from One Stop Plus: The Sack Effect. Even things that look fitted on the models are often, indeed, little more than a sack meant to be thrown over one’s fatness with no attempt at making them fit properly. Not long ago the sackness would have been a dealbreaker, and back it would have gone with its little highway-bloody-robbery $7 return label. But lo, today I have embraced the belt and it has saved me from sackdom.

In the interest of sharing the wealth (dare I say spreading the wealth around?) I’ve assembled a collection of sweaterdresses I’ve unearthed online, and belts that might help them fit and flatter even the most sweaterdress-unfriendly bodies.

So, the dresses:

I have had generally positive experiences with Jessica London for both basic cardigans (my other wardrobe staple) and dresses. Their items tend to be fairly well made (with occasional exceptions) and with the plentiful coupons available all over the web (retailmenot.com, ahem) their prices are damn reasonable. Thus, I’ve been pondering the purchase of this cableknit cowl-neck dress myself; the big bonus here for me is clearly marked empire waist - I could totally put a belt right there. “But Lesley!” you might inquire, “Why bother with the belt? The dress looks fine as is!” It does, gentle reader, on the model. Unfortunately for me and anyone else with a particularly fat midsection, it would look less fine on my actual body. Note the absence of an a-line skirt there. That sucker is cut like a sausage casing, straight the heck down. On me, without a belt that dress would look like a plain old sweater some knitter just couldn’t stop knitting (and knitting! and knitting!). With a belt (and some tights, and some fabulous boots), it’ll look polished even on my belly-heavy shape. The only thing I don’t like about this cabled sweaterdress from Jessica London is the cap sleeves. Why cap sleeves on a sweater? It makes no sense to me.

Lane Bryant is currently stocking a fabulous sweater dress with an asymetrical neckline and an interesting button detail along the collar and down one sleeve. I actually happened to be in a Lane Bryant store (this happens maybe a dozen times a year) a week or two ago and saw it in person; the image on the website truly did not do it justice. It’s a gorgeous dress. I’d love to show it to you, I really would. Except the image is missing from Lane Bryant’s website. So you’ll have to take my word for it.

Dolman sleeves and wool. This is basically my dream sweaterdress. Shame the price isn’t more dreamy (and yes, I do have dreams about shopping and getting everything for free; don’t you?). What we’re looking at here is a Jones New York sweaterdress with oversized dolman sleeves and a wide banded neckline, in a delicious caramel-colored wool. Oh and look! It’s got a belt already! I didn’t just make this shit up! Of course, that teeny little bit o’ cording would not go far on me; I try to make sure my belts are appropriately in scale with the rest of my body. But it’s a step.

Yes, I can hear the incredulous laughter from here. This turtlenecked, bell-sleeved, “babydoll” sweater dress from Silhouettes is pretty hilarious in the catalog image. Like a big blonde space explorer from Planet Just-A-Bit-Chilly-Today who learned to emulate Earth fashions by watching John Waters movies. (This, itself, makes the dress great in my opinion.) I’d personally tamp down on the LOOK-IT’S-MOD aspects with a wide belt right at the empire line - assuming said empire line hits under my bust like it’s supposed to. It does look a little high on the model, now that I think about it. I would also go without the silver space boots, though I would like to keep them for other nefarious purposes unrelated to this particular outfit. Still, I am strangely drawn to this dress. I think it has a lot of potential, if I could only get my hands on one to style in my own way.

Speaking of possibly-awful dresses to which I am irresistibly drawn as a steep Fatshion Challenge, let’s talk about Torrid. OH LET’S! Let’s talk about this dress, which I can’t get out of my head lately. There’s something about wide vertical stripes that freak me out in an apparel context. In my head, I usually think either “awning” or “clown outfit”. And for once, the copy on Torrid’s site is understated. This dress is so authentically of the 1980s aesthetic that it may well have been based on an actual vintage piece. I swear my mom had this dress - and I borrowed it - when I was but a wee fatling fatshionista. And yet, strangely, I want it. I want the heck out of it. I think this is a dress I could rock… steady… steady rockin’ all night long. Dare I speak even of rockin’ to the break of dawn?* Even the youthful among you catch my meaning if not my reference. This dress plus a big obnoxious shiny belt would be like so totally choice.

Before I lose my mind in public any further, I’ll move on to the belt portion of our show.

It’s been my experience that finding plus size belts can be a serious challenge, unless one is looking for belts of a certain type. That type would be belts-that-are-also-surrogate-corsets. Torrid is the de facto queen of super-wide cincher belts. They’ve always got at least a couple to choose from, and while Torrid’s more gothified/punkified belts do speak to a certain aesthetic, it’s not mine (uh, anymore - I ask you, where the hell was Torrid when I was painting my own Marilyn Manson t-shirts in 1993?).

Igigi has a few wide cincher-style belts that do speak to me, however, like this intimidating multi-buckle beauty. This may go without saying, but in my opinion, the wider and more dramatic the belt, the simpler the dress it goes over should be. I personally have a very low tolerance for belt with patent (almost universally faux, these days) finishes, and will only wear them with garments that are practically funereal in their solemn simplicity. That’s just how I roll, though, and I encourage folks to wear their big crazy belts with whatever they like, since that’s how a person builds style in the first place.

Igigi also has a wide cincher belt in bronze that’s a little less… dominating. This one’s a little more relaxed, and a little more in line with my style. I would blissfully pair this belt in particular with the Jones New York dress above, replacing that tiny bit of blinged-out rope they’re using as a belt at present. I also dig a textured belt like the croc-embossed version at Torrid, to add a little visual interest to an otherwise-dull monochromatic outfit - imagine the first dress above in black. Truth be told, Avenue has a version of a wide faux-croc belt I like better than Torrid’s, but because their site does not allow remote linking, I can’t share it with you.** Feel free to hunt it down yourself, however, as it’s lovely.

If you’re more in the market for a belt you can buy in a rainbow of colors for cheap, Curvy Girl Clothing can hook you up. Their ubiquitous pleather sash belt is currently on sale in four colors for just $2.99 each. The quality of some of Curvy Girl’s stuff is not always fantastic - I adore my original wrap dresses from them, but have been sorely disappointed with other stuff I’ve bought - but for $2.99 how can you really go wrong?

Now anyone who’s seen my oufit posts know the belts above have three strikes against them when trying to wear them myself: they’re wide, they’re stretchy, and they’re not real leather. I am not opposed to these things - heaven knows I’ve got belts in each and all of these catagories that I wear frequently - but I strongly prefer a good sturdy leather belt, even if it’s going to cost me, and even if it requires the patience of a saint and the persistence of a Red Sox fan to find them, since leather belts in 50″+ lengths are not easy to find. For this reason I am a huge fan of Steel Toe Studios; Erica, the brains (and brawn) behind the operation has made me several custom-sized belts with no complaints and no additional charge. I think this is so awesome I can barely stand it. That’s probably obvious given that I wear these belts several times a week, as seen in my Flickr parade o’ outfits. As a bonus, all my Steel Toe Studios belts have snaps that make them interchangable with various buckles, and who doesn’t like to play Transformers with their clothes? This is also useful since buckles themselves are not size-specific, so having a few custom-cut leather belts in my size means I can shop for different buckles all over creation, knowing I won’t be held back by not having a fitting belt to wear them with.

And speaking of belts, if you’re after more elaborate leathers, Rad Cow on Etsy is a shop you’ll want to check out. I’ve not had any personal experience with them (yet) but their listings say they’ll make their belts in any size. A lot of their belts are both hand-dyed and hand-tooled, producing some incredibly unique and unexpected designs.

Truth be told - and this is obvious by now - I’ll wear belts with most of my dresses if I feel the need. Does that dress feel a little baggy and unflattering today? Belt! Or is my outfit just plain boring and I don’t have time to get more creative with it? Belt! But the single most useful aspect of my discovery that Yes, Lesley, You Can Wear Belts Too was the fit flexibility it’s given me. Embracing the belt has meant that I can now wear certain things that, owing to cut and fit problems, I never even would have looked at twice before, because I was so sure that particular garments would never, ever be flattering on my shape, so matter what I did. Like sweaterdresses, which I studiously avoided for years, believing they’d never work. I’m always so happy to be wrong about these things.

*If I have to go purchase that song on iTunes as a result of this post, I’m going to be very disturbed.

**Yet another reason why Avenue and I are not on friendly terms at the moment. As if I needed more. NO LINKS FOR YOU, AVENUE.

I first learned of eShakti via conversations in the Fatshionista LiveJournal community, where the site received mixed reviews. Clearly, given my frequent gambles with Lily0808168 - the China-located seller on the eBay who makes the infamous ruffle dress, among other things - I have become a lot more willing to take a risk on an untested international resource for clothing, as I’ve made peace with the fact that success in these endeavours is, indeed, a roll of the dice, and though it can pay off big, it can also fail equally spectacularly. With international shopping, there’s a plethora of things that can go wrong - sizing, fit, weird fabric, wrong color - and returns are typically out of the question since the return shipping to Wherever In The World alone may outstrip the cost of the original garment. So making a purchase is a commitment to the unknown. An unknown you will have to wait five to six weeks to see realized.

Buying from Lily0808168 has helped me make peace with that; the seller in question, I am led to understand, owns (either in part or in full) a garment factory in China, which produces these clothes in a dramatically wide range of sizes (up to 10X, in some cases). My Lily scorecard as it currently stands is three successes, two utter failures, and one draw. Two of the successes are the aforementioned ruffle dress in two colors; the third is what I am now calling the “Hulk dress” as a nod to its proclivity toward dye leakage which turns its wearer (me) green (I need to get on some kind of dye-setting wash, pronto, now that I think of it). The draw was a dress that I would have liked way better if only it were actually dress-length, instead of being tunic-length such that I have to wear it with pants of some kind. The failures were two other dresses with extremely weird fit problems - one that fit everywhere except for having TINY TINY sleeves; another that was too-big around the bust, and with an empire waist that fell way higher than it should, in a way that was totally bewildering (another review of Lily0808168’s stuff is here). Overall I’d characterize my opinion of Lily0808168 as fair-to-positive; I can also affirm that all my customer service experiences have been extremely good, though folks less patient with non-native speakers of English may have more problems than I have.

(As an aside: I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least acknowledge that I have occasional political misgivings about my purchases, given China’s history of human rights violations, and the fact that I have no idea about the conditions under which these garments are manufactured. The sad thing is, however, that this is true of a lot of the clothes I buy, which may be from American companies but were produced under murky circumstances overseas. The immediacy of going directly to the source, as it were - buying straight from the factory, which may or may not be a great place to work - has made me think more critically about where, exactly, my clothes come from. ALL of my clothes.)

While my Lily experiments definitely made me appreciate that international shopping is a hit-or-miss proposition, I also knew the eShakti temptation was not something I’d be able to resist for long, as so many of their items have a bit of an Anthropologie-but-for-fatties! vibe, something I’ve often longed for. Sure, they’re located in India, and the long turnaround time might be frustrating. But a store full of eye-catching, brightly colored, mostly-100%-cotton dresses, at reasonable prices? They may as well have named the shop after me. I placed my first order early this month and received it this week, so I thought I’d offer my review.

Most of the items on the eShakti site have a turnaround time of about twenty days total - 15 days to produce the item, and then another 3 to 5 days for the garment to be shipped to you. This is, no doubt, related to the fact that eShakti’s big selling point is the customization it offers - love a certain tunic but wish it had sleeves? You can add them. Adore a certain dress but wish it were a little shorter? You can change that too. Don’t like the look of their size chart, and want something to made to your precise measurements? No problem. Seriously. Any custom alterations cost an additional $10 per garment, which is damn impressive considering the cost of custom-made clothing in the US. In that context, waiting 15 days for the item to ship is not unreasonable, in my opinion.

On the quality: I ordered three dresses. And color me shocked, but for once I think the quality of the garments is nicely in line with what they cost. I can’t remember the last time I said that. All three dresses I chose are 100% cotton, and while the fabric is lightweight and the dresses are unlined (and thus probably better suited for warmer climes than Boston right now), the quality is very good, and the construction is surprisingly excellent. These dresses are essentially what I once expected Blue Plate dresses to be, except without being gratuitously overpriced and frequently shoddily made.

On the fit: I didn’t go with the custom sizing, but ordered everything in a 3X. My historic attempts at commissioning clothing made to my measurements have met with fairly consistent failure - I blame my truly weird proportions and lack of an identifiable waist - so I didn’t want to risk it when the 3X looked like it ought to fit (for reference, I wear a 26 at Lane Bryant and a 3X or 4X at Torrid). And it does fit! All the dresses fit fine, even the ones with sleeves, even across my hard-to-accommodate shoulders. The 3X is the largest standard size they make, so folks larger than me would have to go custom, but speaking as a body typically left out of a lot of smaller plus-size manufacturers’ size charts altogether, it’s impressive that they go as big as they do in standard sizes, especially since this is not a plus-size exclusive website. (Note: I’ve heard tales told more than once of serious fit issues with the custom-sized clothing here, so your mileage may vary.)

On the customer service: They kept good email contact - I expect owing to the long turnaround times, they send out automatically generated status updates to keep folks happy - and when I did email with a question, I had a personalized response within 24 hours. Also, though it did take a couple of weeks for my items to ship, they got to me surprisingly quickly - within four days - considering they came from the other side of the world. I can’t speak personally to the return process as of yet, but their return policy sounds sane on the surface: any item (even custom!) can be returned in unworn condition within 10 days of receipt. My order came with a prepaid return label included (the cost of which would be deducted from the return), which is a nice touch. Plus, the returns center is located in the US, which would hopefully eliminate any long waits for refunds to be processed.

Overall I’m pretty damn chuffed with my order, and will certainly be ordering from eShakti again, assuming the world economy doesn’t completely implode in the near future - hey, at least their prices are good. And for me, a willingness to order again is probably the strongest recommendation I could make. Also, a tip: register with their site and they’ll send you a coupon for $15 off your first purchase, and they don’t kill you with frequent emails either). And shipping is free for all orders over $50.

For the record, I get nothing from eShakti for writing the above review. Though I would gladly review many individual dresses if they’d like to send me free samples. Hint hint.

When I first saw this dress on the Lane Bryant website, I thought it looked like a Victorian nightshirt. Maybe a hospital gown.

I ordered it anyway, because I had a coupon and I enjoy a challenge. I’m glad to report that I was pleasantly surprised by what I recieved. For the past couple of seasons, Lane Bryant’s dresses have been far more miss than hit with me. There’s an abundance of cheap-feeling synthetic knits and obnoxious patterns, both of which are fine in moderation, but it’s seemed to me like both of the above, together, in various combinations, was all they had to offer as of late. Thus, I ordered a hospital-gown-looking dress, simply out of gratitude that there was a dress on the site not made of polyester and not emblazoned with unimaginative and uninteresting florals. It’s cotton! With subtle stripes! I have to give it a try!

And with it, I did the following:

The dress is much more crisp and fresh looking in real life than it is in the unfortunate website representation; setting aside for the moment the extreme creepiness of LB’s head-chopped web images, I find bad pictures are an annoyingly common problem with Lane Bryant in particular (Torrid is a serial offender in this arena as well). Based on the nightshirt picture above, I had expected this would be the sort of dress that works fabulously when correctly styled, but looked drab on its own. I was wrong. The dress can totally stand by itself. It would be against my nature to wear it that way (MUST. LAYER.), but it’s nice to be reasonably assured that on a hot day I could shed a few dozen layers and still look good in the dress by itself.

And speaking of Torrid.

I gave this green cutout dress a shot because, well, it’s green, and I cannot resist green. Add to that the fact that it was on sale and I’m surprised Torrid didn’t just automatically bill me for it and ship it directly to my house as soon as it came into stock. The dress also looked lightweight and roomy and just plain pretty, all good attributes in a spring dress.

And I received it! And all was good in the land of green dresses. Except for one little, piddly, ever-so-inconsequential thing.

It’s made of rayon. I stopped buying woven rayon ANYTHING in the early 1990s, because if I did anything other than stand perfectly upright and motionless in a quiet room, within a matter of hours the damn garment would look like something designed by a Shar Pei (oh, I had such a collection of gorgeously soft and flowy rayon blouses by Esprit way back when, all of which required gratuitous ironing and still looked like rumpled rags by the end of the day, but I digress).

I hate wrinkles, but I hate ironing more. You can see my conundrum. I hadn’t actually realized just how bad the wrinkling was on this dress until editing the photographs. And when I did, I - this is so embarrassing - I actually attempted to photoshop the wrinkles out. I did. I admit it. I failed spectacularly, given that I am not in any way talented with photo retouching. But I tried. It’s a very, very wrinkle-prone dress, and I have to make my peace with that.

Aside from that, it’s not a bad garment, not by Torrid standards, which I generally identify as being overpriced and middling quality. Next time I wear it, I will either forego the sash or wear a different belt altogether, as the included tie belt wouldn’t stay put, and just shriveled itself into a wrinkled rayony rope anyway.

Next time: I am in search of cotton eyelet sundresses. Also, catalog whispering at its finest.

I’m very into shirtdresses right now. Particularly cotton shirtdresses. I expect this is due in part to my unabashed longing for spring to, you know, actually start. Regardless of the reason, I’m constantly on the prowl for this surprisingly elusive item lately.

Exhibit A: The Sizzling Shirt Dress, by Mlle Gabrielle, currently on sale at alight.com. I dig this one because, with its big-button front, piping-embellished edges, and big collar, it vaguely reminds me of 1950s-era waitress uniforms. This dress is 100% cotton, which means it does not stretch, and it wrinkles if you merely look at it funny (the impressively-wrinkled version above is the unsurprising end-of-day result of my desk job).

On the plus side, it’s 100% cotton. I’ll never understand why it’s such a trial to find plus sizes in natural fibers. Though I don’t claim to speak for everyone, I will always take a nice crisp cotton dress over a slinky polyester jersey if given the choice. While it wrinkles like nobody’s business, and doesn’t have that luxurious stretch (at least not without a bit of spandex), cotton can always be relied upon to breathe beautifully, to launder without pilling (like so many cheap jerseys seem to do; see every Old Navy dress I’ve bought in the last three years), and to just plain feel better, in my opinion.

Overall I’m very pleased with the above dress. Sure, the shoulders and arms are a bit more closely-fitting that I’d ideally like, but then that’s a common experience for me and my giant ham-like upper arms. And sure, the included belt broke within literal seconds of my removing the garment from the package in which it was shipped, but hey, it was on sale.

Next:

Exhibit B: The Bridgewater Studio Print Shirtdress, from the Jessica London catalog, also currently on sale (I cannot honestly recall the last time I bought something that wasn’t on sale, but I digress). The image above is from the catalog, because I don’t have a picture of myself in this one as of yet. I bought this in the navy and white print, which I like a lot more than the color above.

The Jessica London website has fairly recently added user reviews to its item pages. This is pretty awesome of them, I must say, because my experience is that buying from catalogs is at best an inconvenient annoyance and at worst a major catastrophe. If I think too long about the amount of money I’ve lost to Jessica London and Newport News and their ilk in shipping fees for items I’ve had to return, I start to go all deranged and Hulkish. Thus, the reviews are pretty sweet, as it gives others the chance to warn newcomers off an item that looked just precious on the page but was in reality a horror upon receipt.

And sometimes I ignore their warnings.

The reviews for the above dress are pretty uniformly bad. Most of the complaints are about the size being too small, and the fabric feeling “cheap”. Hey, it’s cotton again. This partly answers my question of why plus sizes in natural fibers are so hard to come by - maybe lots of fat folks don’t like them. Regardless, I took a chance on this dress - thinking that the complainers were expecting something other than a light cotton dress - and I’m pleased I did. The fabric is a very nice, soft, woven cotton, and the dress fits like I expect a 26W to fit. My only gripe is the length. It’s just above the knee on me (I am just over 5′9″), which isn’t really a problem, as I enjoy shorter dresses, but I’d expected it to be longer based on the image of the model. (And besides, it’s really my fault for not paying attention to the skirt length measurement listed, which I just noticed, just now.)

That wraps up this dress report. Next time I hope to have good things to say about this dress and this dress, both from Lane Bryant. Given my recent failures at LB, though, I am not optimistic.