Not so many years ago, most places in Canada had:
- Cotton-Ginny-Plus in malls, selling casual clothes,
- Addition-Elle in the malls, selling somewhat trendy clothes,
- Pennington's in strip malls selling generally more generic plus-sized clothes
- Several stores that had plus-sizes sections, including Rietmans.
In the last few years the Cotton-Ginny chain has disapeared and Addition-Elle was bought bought by Dylex (the parent company of Pennington's and Rietman's), mosstly moved from malls to strip/box malls, and IMO lost some of of its more stylish edge.
In other words, the vast majority of plus-sizes clothing options for women seem to be controlled by Dylex.....and that is not a good thing. As a chain they seem to hope that women will have little individual style and will buy cheap-ish versions of whatever was predicted to be in style six months ago. The offerings at Addition-Elle and Pennington's are getting harder and harder to tell apart, too.
My wife is getting driven crazy, because the lack of options means that if what Dylex forsaw this year's trend being isn't something that she likes, she may be out of luck. Now, for tops she can still get t-shirts and the like from places like Mark's Work Wearhouse or some other stores, but for bottoms not so much, and of course lots of other women need a plus-sizes solution.
One option is obviously the web, but if your body has a quirky fit, it really sucks not to be able to try things on.
So I'm hoping to get a bit of a list of plus size stores in Canada, be it chains or local independents. After all, people do travel, but often won't even know to go look for a particular independent.
So....anyone got suggestions?
- Cotton-Ginny-Plus in malls, selling casual clothes,
- Addition-Elle in the malls, selling somewhat trendy clothes,
- Pennington's in strip malls selling generally more generic plus-sized clothes
- Several stores that had plus-sizes sections, including Rietmans.
In the last few years the Cotton-Ginny chain has disapeared and Addition-Elle was bought bought by Dylex (the parent company of Pennington's and Rietman's), mosstly moved from malls to strip/box malls, and IMO lost some of of its more stylish edge.
In other words, the vast majority of plus-sizes clothing options for women seem to be controlled by Dylex.....and that is not a good thing. As a chain they seem to hope that women will have little individual style and will buy cheap-ish versions of whatever was predicted to be in style six months ago. The offerings at Addition-Elle and Pennington's are getting harder and harder to tell apart, too.
My wife is getting driven crazy, because the lack of options means that if what Dylex forsaw this year's trend being isn't something that she likes, she may be out of luck. Now, for tops she can still get t-shirts and the like from places like Mark's Work Wearhouse or some other stores, but for bottoms not so much, and of course lots of other women need a plus-sizes solution.
One option is obviously the web, but if your body has a quirky fit, it really sucks not to be able to try things on.
So I'm hoping to get a bit of a list of plus size stores in Canada, be it chains or local independents. After all, people do travel, but often won't even know to go look for a particular independent.
So....anyone got suggestions?
