Black Plus Size Coats

Many years ago I remember going shopping for plus size coats with my grandmother when the air would start to get a chill to it.  We would get on the bus and go downtown to the one mall in town that had a Lane Bryant store in it.  My grandma was as round as she was tall and that was the only store where she could buy plus size outerwear.  Every winter she treated herself to a new Lane Bryant coat because there were very few, if any, designers who offered plus size outerwear.  In fact, she told me often that is was a family curse because her mother had to shop at the Army Navy Surplus Store for a man’s pea coat or trench coat that would fit.  They didn’t have Lane Bryant stores when my great-grandma was alive.  In fact, they didn’t even have a mall yet!  Now you can find plus size outerwear in almost every clothing store, both high end fashions as well as inexpensive designs.  My grandma is gone now, but I can just imagine how she would have been thrilled to see all the ads in the Sunday paper, “plus size coats on sale.”

Today stores like J.C. Penny’s carry plus size jackets as well as plus size winter coats at reasonable prices.  For trendy plus size coats you can shop at Macy’s, Dillard’s, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales or Nordstrom to name just a few high end department stores.  Most department stores have a plus size department that carry everything from plus size dresses to plus size trench coats.  Lane Bryant will probably always be synonymous with plus size outerwear but she no longer owns the market.  There is so much to choose from out there that it would be a shame not to take advantage of many stores and many designers.

I still can’t help but wonder what my grandmother would have done if there were home computers in her generation.  Oh, they had computers but they were quite literally as big as a house and slower than a simple palm pilot is today.  I can imagine her sense of awe and wonder at all the plus size outerwear popping up in front of her in a heartbeat.  She would probably be sitting here right now charging plus size coats and plus size jackets and all kinds of plus size clothing until her card was maxed out.  Of course, in her day she used to have a charge account at the local store where she would only have to sign for her purchases and Grandpa would pay the bills each paycheck.  Now all those stores have their own merchant credit cards and there is Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, etc, etc, etc.  Come to think of it, I’m glad they didn’t have computers then because Grandpa would have died of a stroke rather than old age if he had seen how much Grandma could have spent on plus size clothes. Unfortunately, I have inherited the “family curse” and now I do the plus size shopping for her.

What can I do? I am a woman and I need my clothes, whether that involves jackets or even the simplest of all tops. I don’t think I should be embarrassed because of my shopping habits, because after all, it does run in the family. From Grandma to daughter and from daughter to granddaughter, here I come to rock the malls. Better watch out because I am coming to grab some of those new plus size winter coats! And I won’t stop there!