Praise Be, Whoopi Goldberg's Size-Inclusive Fashion Line Drops Today
Deliver us from evil, Whoopi!
The ambitious project of 'size-inclusive fashion' is by no means a finished one; although there are scores more options for all bodies in fashion than there were ten years ago (hello, Rodarte x Universal Standard), the luxury and retail industries alike still struggle to effectively provide shoppers with real size-inclusive options (as opposed to merely paying lip service to what the New Yorker' calls the "plus-size revolution", while continuing to cater primarily to straight-size shoppers.)
Enter (drumroll, please): Whoopi, stage right.
EGOT in hand, 63-year-old actress and The View host Goldberg is launching a new, size-inclusive fashion line, DUBGEE, which will offer a range of sizes from XS to 3X, which can be purchased at Amazon, Ashley Stewart, Le Tote, and Neiman Marcus stores. (No, this isn't spon-con, regrettably.)
Goldberg has long been a fixture at fashion shows from Jason Wu to Chromat to Eckhaus Latta, as novelist Ottessa Moshfegh reported in her profile of Goldberg for GARAGE, so a fashion line of her own is a natural fit. In fact, Moshfegh notes, this isn't Goldberg's first foray into fashion design; "She has a line of ugly Christmas sweaters. You can buy them on Zappos." [Ed.: you sure can.]
Goldberg told Moshfegh that the inspiration for DUBGEE's size-inclusive range came from a trip to Greece where she couldn't find any clothing that fit her: “It made me feed bad, like my body doesn’t fit.” But what does the Moshfegh-described "queen of elevated comfortwear" do with a whole collection of her own?
"This is one of my shirts that I have on...it's really gorgeous. It looks great on everybody. If you have a large chest, it's great for you; if you have a small chest, it's great for you; if you have no chest, it's great for you," announces Goldberg on Instagram in her signature smoky voice, modeling a plain white oxford with a bow tie at the back. How can you say no to that?
DUBGEE's loose silhouettes and playful patterns will look familiar to anyone who's ever browsed the Universal Standard website (no shade! It's hard to truly reinvent the size-inclusive wheel), but even if there's nothing jaw-dropping about the collection, there's something quietly revolutionary about a celebrity of Goldberg's stature choosing to put her name on a line of clothing that might actually fit the majority of American women.
DUBGEE's clothes don't insist upon a specific image of what an ideal customer could or should look like; Goldberg's cocoon dresses and colorful stripes would look equally at home on your Silver Lake hypebeast neighbor, your Park Slope PTA president, your cool babysitter from middle school in Sandusky, Ohio, or on Meryl Streep in the Mamma Mia 3: Even More Mamma, Even More Mia threeboot that we dedicated stans so desperately crave. And really, isn't that universality the whole point of so-called 'size-inclusive fashion'?