Ethical Dilemmas of Retailing

The fashion industry is a huge ethical dilemma inside of itself. “Skinny” models that create unrealistic body expectations, along with the fashion industry putting their mark on what they think the true “plus size” is. They set the bars extremely high. It creates a whole new shopping experience for some women. “If only I lost a few pounds, I could fit into the smaller version of this dress.” Whether you realize it or not, fashion-conscious women are sometimes stuck in a moral dilemma: Do I need to be skinny to be fashionable? The answer, of course, is no. However, to a lot of women, the answer may be a little more complicated.

As a retailer, the fashion industry sets the rules. We look to them for the current trends and latest fashions. Most retailers take couture designs and create clothing for more practical and affordable wear. This is a long process that demands time and a lot of research. Fashion is ever so changing, so a retailer has to be on top of their game. In such cases, the fashion industry sets the sizing that goes along with clothing. This can be challenging because of the gap between fashion world and real world.

In real world, an average woman is a size 10 - 12 and is about 5 foot 4 inches tall. In fashion world, the average woman is a size 0 – 4 and is about 5 foot 9 inches tall. This is a tremendous gap. The fashion world also considers size 8 a plus size, while in real world, retailers consider 14 and larger a plus size. An ongoing trend in fashion world is the introduction of smaller sizes, as low as 00. First of all, how is 00 even a size? That’s smaller than most children’s clothing.

Another issue pertaining to plus size clothing is that stores are completely removing their plus size section, but still offering it online. Old Navy is ridding their floors of plus sizes, according the article I read. What is this telling women about their bodies? That certain sized clothing isn’t worthy enough to be sold in stores? It’s an outrage that certain retailers will agree to such a thing.

To the other side of this ethical dilemma, there are retailers that focus on selling to smaller sized women. For example, the store named 5 – 7 – 9 caters to women who are either size 5, 7, or 9. They don’t sell sizes that are bigger nor smaller and they definitely won’t agree to do alterations. There are other specialty retailers that cater to specifically petite women, which is understandable being that a lot of basic retailers can’t afford to carry the “specialty” sizes. These basic stores stick to selling standard sized clothing, such as “small, medium, and large”. Those sizes are never universal. A size small at the Gap is not the same as a size small at Abercrombie and Fitch.

But to bring it all together, I believe the fashion world has an almost negative impact on retailing today. Whether it be what models we choose to use in our advertisements all the way to the size of the mannequins we choose to use in our stores. It can be a dirty, gritty industry. I personally believe that if the fashion industry focused more on the clothing itself, rather than what kind of person has to wear it, they’d be more successful than ever.