'My entire life has been spent making movies and talking about the inclusion of all women. So this just made natural sense to me.'
Reese Witherspoon Launches Size-Inclusive Draper James Line With Eloquii
When Reese Witherspoon launched Draper James in 2015, shoppers responded instantly, and overwhelmingly, with two distinct messages: Love the clothes. And: Wish you made them in more sizes. “They were on my social media, on Draper James’ social media, saying, ‘We need more inclusive sizing,’ ” Witherspoon, 42, recalls. Her own friends echoed the sentiment, saying, “ ‘OK, girl, I love your clothes, but you’ve got to have the sizes that include every girl.’ And I heard them, you know?”
Thus began a yearlong process of figuring out how to expand her initial offering of sizes 0 to 14. (Two thirds of American women are a size 14 or above, after all.) Witherspoon started with a deep dive into the research and then connected with Eloquii, known for its chic, size-inclusive pieces and reasonable prices. “They know how to design to a body [in a way] that makes women feel good,” she says. It was the perfect complement to her own mission with Draper James: “making pretty easy.”
And now Draper James x Eloquii features 30 pieces in sizes 12 to 28—belted shorts, crisp pencil skirts, and that trademark Draper James item, the punchy sundress. The collection will be available at Eloquii, Rent the Runway, and draperjames.com—“three female-led companies,” Witherspoon points out. We got the details on how it all came together.
Glamour: You’ve wanted Draper James to be size-inclusive for a while. How did it finally happen?
Reese Witherspoon: My entire life has been spent making movies and talking about the inclusion of all women. So this just made natural sense to me. But I quickly realized that it is such an intensive process, and one which required expertise. I didn’t want to just do it myself and not do it well. I wanted to do research and find the people who are the best at doing this, [the people who] make women feel great and don’t talk down to them.
Glamour: It’s great when brands expand their sizes, but so often you wind up with, say, a pair of jeans that fit around the waist but are about 11 feet too long in the leg.
RW: It’s so frustrating. Nobody thinks about the emotional process that women go through when they try on clothes. I think about it every time we do a fitting with a model. We try our pieces on every single woman in the Draper James office too, because if it doesn’t make you feel good, it’s not part of the solution. It’s part of the problem.
AdvertisementGlamour: Was there anything surprising or challenging about the process?
RW: I wouldn’t say challenging. The great part about working with Eloquii is that they’ve already done so much work with their customers. They know what the fits are. They know what their customers like. So it was fantastic to be able to listen to the feedback they already had, and design into those ideas.
Glamour: I love that—designing into it. Rather than trying to fit women into a preexisting mold, you’re working with what they present to you.
RW: Exactly. Designing into their wants and needs.
Glamour: One thing I love about Draper James is the cheeriness of it. Clothing above size 12 often skews dark, as if it’s designed to make women not stand out.
RW: Right. We don’t need to hide and diminish ourselves. Now there’s so much messaging in the world saying the opposite: Be proud of who you are. Unsubscribe from the notion that you’re not good enough. I want you to put on a dress, zip it up, and go, “I know I look good, I know it fits—and I know I look pretty.” You can be strong, you can be a feminist, you can be an incredibly hardworking woman—and still like pretty!
Glamour: As you’ve put it, Draper James is “unapologetically” pretty.
RW: Yeah! And it has a sense of humor. Fashion is too serious sometimes. I have a candy cane dress that I literally wear to every holiday party. I just like clothing that has a sense of fun. My mother and my girlfriends and I are telling jokes and laughing all day long. That’s what we try to capture in the clothes.
Glamour: A lot of designers have avoided expanding their sizing because they’re concerned it will “tarnish” the brand. Was there any resistance when you decided to do this collaboration?
RW: My motto in starting the collection was “female first.” I wanted to see the unseen. I wanted to make a clothing brand about the small-town lifestyle I grew up living. The people in those communities can be fashion-forward too, but they’re not really celebrated.
Glamour: You work in the entertainment industry, which is not historically size-inclusive. Do you see things changing?
RW: Absolutely. I mean, it’s ridiculous, the lack of inclusion of different body types in our industry. It’s not reflective of the world we live in. I started a production company six years ago to have more women be the authors of their stories. That means including every shape of body and all we experience with those bodies. My body has birthed three children. I’ve had all those experiences, being an insecure teenage girl and growing into who I am as a woman. I want to tell those stories in their full truth. There’s a full expression of the female experience we have not yet seen on film.
Glamour: Do you have a dream person you’d like to see in Draper James?
RW: All the women I worked with on A Wrinkle in Time—Ava DuVernay, Mindy Kaling, and Oprah. She inspires me so much…definitely Oprah.
With additional reporting from Ana Colón. Kelsey Miller is a writer in New York and author of Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life and the forthcoming I’ll Be There for You.
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:CelebDailyPosts
