Above: Leather duster lined
in printed silk, with
matching leather pants
designed by Cuir d'Ore.
Left: A fashionable striped
dress has complimentary
coat from Givency En Plus.
shows quality, and if you can
live up to your name the
customer will make the pur-
chase," she says.
While the dress business has
blossomed, sportswear is boom-
ing. Many manufacturers, like
I.B. Diffusion, Gitano and
French Vanilla, have expanded
into large size divisions — with
great results. "We offer the
customer something she hasn't
had before," says Robin
Weinberg, account executive at
Bonnie Boerer, a sweater and
separate company. "We offer
her pizazz and change, so that
when she walks into a room
people notice how special look-
ing she is."
Sheila Rubin At Large, a com-
pany that represents four dif-
ferent sportswear lines, (Lady
Lilly, Fettucini, Why Not?, and To
The Max) in her Manhattan
showroom, agrees that sports-
wear is breaking new fashion
ground. She says, "When I got
into this business 13 years ago,
if women could find a print shirt
they were excited. Today, a
large size woman who says she
can't find anything isn't looking
hard enough. Now, she can
wear belts, stripes and bright
colors as long as they fit prop-
erly."
Along with manufacturers set-
ting design trends, stores in
New York have become
trailblazers in presenting the ar-
ray of large size fashions. The
Forgotten Woman, for example,
is a 21-store nationwide chain.
Nancy Radmin, president of the
company and a large size
woman herself, knew that the
key to success was to offer the
large size woman everything
she wants. "My goal when I
started was to get clothes that I
could wear myself, but there
was nothing around except
polyester pull-on pants," she
says of the store she founded
eight years ago.
All that has changed, and
Radmin gives the credit to her
store. "If it wasn't for my store,
there wouldn't be a large size
market because we have
pushed and hollered and
screamed for better goods," she
says. "The more we talked
about it, the more publicity we
got. Others saw what The
Forgotten Woman was doing
and got into it."
The Forgotten Woman carries
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