I love you Beth, but...

Today is finally the day the new collection by Beth Ditto launches. I was pretty excited about this, because I liked the two collections with Evans and hoped this collection would be even better without Evans trying to tone down Beth bold and cool ideas.
It's a common phrase I heared from Maite Kelly and her collection with Bon Prix as well. She would have done more/different, but alas they'd rather play safe. So without this unnecessary pressure from the retailer one teamed up with it should be a lot better, am I right?? Well, I am not so sure about that anymore and that's deeply disappointing.

But back to the recent collection. There were a lot of things that raised my hopes for this collection. To begin with Beth is fat herself and her style is pretty flawless, she follows a lot of fat babes on Instagram, likes their posts and she seems to be really interested in the community. She even asked fat fashion bloggers about their wants and needs, which is pretty much the best thing you can do if you plan to make fashion for us. Then she promised us that the collection would not stop at a UK 24 or 26 which is - well I wanted to write awesome, but actually it's really only decent and most other shops are just shitty when it comes to not excluding many fat people - but I do admit that they do pretty well at this point. A limit at US28/UK30/D58 is something I am privileged enough to find okay.

There are some huge exclusions that really do bother me though. As a teaser for the collection a shirt/dress was released, a cooperation with Jean-Paul Gaultier. I was not really into it so it didn't bother me much, that it was so expensive. Yesterday I actually said to a friend "Nah, the collection will be cheaper, it was just because it was a designer collaboration!" I wish this would be true but the worst thing about the collection is that is so (pardon my French) damn fucking expensive. I almost couldn't believe it. The cheapest piece is a legging. For 100€. (In my case it would even be 100€ plus 58€ shipping plus about 20% custom duties.) You know those things made out of a bit of fabric that even I could sew with one arm tied to my back. (I could not, but bear with me.) When I buy leggings that cost 20€ I do it with a sigh, so you can imagine how I feel. The collection is supposed to be for us, but I can't see how this would work when people can't even afford a single leggings?
I know most of the collection is made in the US, but Domino Dollhouse did the same and their clothes were a bit more expensive after that, but not to this extent.

As I am not super into the collection I can live with not buying anything, but I am sad. The collection is okay. It's nothing I have never seen and nothing I fell instantly in love with. There are some pieces I would buy if they were 150/200€ cheaper, but I expected something more. I do prefer the old Evans collections, because I think they were a lot cooler, cuter and more creative. I don't see anything that justifies the prices. Okay some pieces are made out of silk (vegans won't love this too much), but modal, rayon and nylon? Cuts that remind me of my old Beth Ditto a Evans dress and stuff I saw in several other shops? Don't get me wrong, this is my taste and if you love the collection it's okay, but I just don't. I wish I could.

This is my favourite piece of the collection.

The thing is, when I try to make a collection that makes my community happy, why would I make it so expensive only a small part can buy it? The ones that have enough money to buy the clothes are not the ones who really need a collection that includes them because they already have enough options to find clothes. I would be totally fine if Beth would be just another celeb that tries to make a bug out of their name and fans, but rather we we're told that this would be for us, because Beth asked us and understood. Given that she didn't grow up in the most wealthy circumstances I would expect something else. I know I will be seeing a lot of her clothes on privileged fatshion blogs (the ones that look exactly like fashion magazines or shiny catalogues who are a bit "body positive" at best) but these are not the spine nor heart of our community. And for once I hoped it would be different.

Let's end this with a tweet of a friend who hits the nail on the head.

Plus Size Collections are not radical, new or revolutionary when they're not available for the general public.

— Jenny Jenn (@_jenny_jenn_) February 15, 2016