Size Matters
By Berne Broudy
Raquel Vélez is loud and proud about being plus-size and BIPOC, and she’s gearing up to produce pants by and for people like her through her new company, Alpine Parrot. Her company’s pants, in sizes 14 to 24, will launch on Kickstarter in April.
In 2016, Plunkett Research estimated that 68% of American women wear a size 14 or above. The same year, Edited surveyed the 25 largest retailers, which carry 15,500 brands; 2.3% of their women’s clothing was plus-size. Statista predicts that revenue from women’s apparel is projected to reach over $165 billion in 2021. According to Statista, “Plus-size is the new average, although it is not typically thought of that way.” The women’s plus-size apparel market was valued at 9.8 billion in the U.S. in 2019.
There’s a clear financial and emotional opportunity, which Vélez is poised to take. Her mission is to create clothing that celebrates and encourages everyone to enjoy the outdoors by celebrating people of size and color. As a woman of size and color, she has a deeply personal understanding of the failures of apparel brands to speak to her and others like her.
“No outdoor brand has said, ‘you matter; your joy matters; you deserve to have fun outside,’ or asked ‘how do we get you there?’” says Vélez. “We want to give plus-size and BIPOC women clothes that fit, clothes we like, and that we feel good about. That’s the first step to getting more plus-size women outside.”
Vélez knows firsthand the double discrimination to which size 14 and larger women are subjugated. “There’s a correlation between people of color and people of size,” she says. “If we really want to do ‘The Work’ of expanding diversity and inclusion in the outdoor space, it goes hand in hand with getting rid of fat phobia.”
Born and raised in New Jersey to Puerto Rican parents, the culturally in-tune, whip smart and eloquent mechanical engineer, software engineer, and robotics expert-turned-pants designer said that growing up, outdoor activity was never on her radar.
“In New Jersey, leaving suburbia to go into the woods wasn’t exciting to me,” says Vélez. “My parents worked hard to give me a house with a bed. It’s an attitude that’s common among people of color.”
At 28, Vélez fell head over heels in love with the outdoors—literally—on Tahoe’s ski slopes.
“Flying down the ski slope in the silence of a snowfall was impactful beyond description,” says Vélez. “I dreamed of it. I couldn’t wait to do it again. When I crashed in a puff on snow, I couldn’t stop laughing.”
Ecstatic, and bursting with excitement to ditch her rain pants and hoodie and get properly outfitted for this new sport, she went to her local gear shop to buy ski clothes. Nothing fit.
Frustrated, Vélez learned to sew the same season she learned to ski. She enrolled in Apparel Arts in Oakland, California, where she developed a concept plus-size snow gear brand for a class. Her professor praised her, saying: “You have to do this. You understand this market like no one else.”
She filed away the compliment. She cried every Sunday when the weekend outdoors ended and she and her husband left the mountains for home. She craved the peace of the mountains. She wanted to make pants so other BIPOC and plus-size women could love being outside too.
Vélez incorporated Alpine Parrot in July 2019; she attended Outdoor Retailer in January 2020; and she quit her tech job in February. Within six months, she was a finalist in Title Nine’s Pitchfest, even though she had no product.
“We don’t have data for different plus sizes,” says Vélez. So in a global pandemic, she collected data herself. She sewed size 16 pants using herself as a fit model. She found local fit testers sized 14 to 24, mapped a size run, and, while masked and distanced, fit and photographed testers.
The data held a revelation: “Women come in two main shapes,” says Vélez. “I learned that if I want a plus-size clothing revolution, I need two silhouettes.”
She created mountain for smaller waists with bigger hips and river for more linear hips and waists. Then she went on tour. From Lake Tahoe to Salt Lake City, Bozeman, Missoula, Seattle, Portland, Arcata, and back, she met with testers of all shapes and sizes, asked them what they wanted, and learned to camp along the way. “When you’re a size 14 or bigger, no one asks you how you feel about your clothes,” says Vélez. “People were so ecstatic to participate. Testers said my pants fit better than any they’ve had in their life, that it was their first time hiking without chafing, and that they had fun outside.”
Most apparel companies tailor clothing to a size 4-6 female or size medium male fit model. Then they grade up and down to create new sizes, which Vélez describes as like using a Xerox to increase or decrease a picture’s percentage with each copy. That doesn’t work for plus sizes. “Grade rules and patterns are different,” says Vélez. “If you just scale up, collars are too big and arms are too long. Someone with a big belly doesn’t necessarily have big shoulders. There is a lack of rigor in understanding the market. Adding sizes without making that side of the market happy is an empty gesture.”
“Women’s bodies change constantly, during the month, year, or from the bottom to the top of the hill,” says Vélez. “Assuming you’ll stay the same size is silly, so I gave these pants a belted adjustable waistband.”
The high-rise pants have five cellphone-size pockets and a body-hugging curved waistband. The two-way stretch nylon fabric is quick-dry, breathable, nonpilling, and not restrictive.
For now, Alpine Parrot stops at size 24. But the plan is to go bigger soon. “It has to be iterative,” says Vélez. “The plus-size community has had their hearts broken so many times. Building trust takes time.”
And Vélez is banking on the authenticity of her message and her community-involved process to build that trust.
Alpine Parrot will sell direct as well as in outdoor shops. “I want people to trust in stores again,” says Vélez. “I want a plus-size woman to be able to walk into an outdoor store and walk out with something that fits. The day my plus-size friends and I can choose between style, color, and function—not fit—that means I’ve won,” she says.
Whether she grows Alpine Parrot into a multimillion-dollar outdoor apparel brand or not, she’s already consulting with other brands on how to make and sell plus-size gear. While fashion brands may do a better job at plus-size apparel than the outdoor industry, less than 3% of clothing made by the top 15,000 brands nationwide is available in plus sizes. H&M, Mango, JCPenny, and others serve plus-size customers. But in the outdoor space, there’s still a stigma. Vélez said she can buy size-16 Kuhl pants at rei.com, but not at kuhl.com.
From a numbers perspective, there’s a lot of money being left on the table. “People are hungry for things that fit them and to be acknowledged as humans,” says Vélez. “What are you worried about?”
It’s a nuanced conversation, and most brands are missing the point. “The O word, obesity, should not be the focus,” says Vélez. “We should have a war against diabetes, not obesity. Health is how much you sleep, exercise, how much you drink, what you eat, your general mental state. That’s what matters, not your size. And brands need to be more careful when you talk about these things. There is a connection between fat phobia and racism.”
On her website (alpineparrot.com), Vélez calls out the outdoor industry for editing plus-size women, and especially plus-size women of color, out of the picture. “It’s time for a company to make outdoor clothing available in sizes worn by more than half the population, featuring models that span the races and ethnicities that call the planet home,” wrote Vélez. “Alpine Parrot will be that company.”
She knows she’s not just making clothes. Sewing plus-size pants that fit is a revolutionary act that’s freeing BIPOC and plus-size women to identify with the outdoors, which will have reverberating repercussions of the best imaginable kind. “It’s life-changing to have clothes that fit, especially when you didn’t know what that meant,” says Vélez. “We’re doing that. And it will change the world.”
—Alpine Parrot is starting a community conversation on Feb. 14. Use code ORWeekly21 for a special treat, valid Feb. 14-21, onalpineparrot.com.
Read The February 2021 Edition
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