I’ve tested my fair share of “cheap” plus size clothes this summer and the results are WILD.
First, let’s just get one slightly uncomfortable thing out of the way. Cheap and or affordable is extremely subjective. Everyone doesn’t have the same income, expenses or place the same value on clothing. For the sake of this post and hey, it’s my personal opinion I’m going to call “affordable” $50 or less.
My outlook on clothes is that somethings are fun and fast and somethings are investment pieces that I think that I’ll want/keep/should last several years. I tend to spend much less money on trends and invest in things that I know I will wear over and over again or that will survive my short attention span. My general go to for fast fashion is ASOS (pictured above) because the trends are always spot on, the quality rarely disappoints and I’ve mastered their sizing chart. I also like places like Eloquii, or Lane Bryant which are a little more pricey than ASOS but I still consider them affordable.
Then there are places like Walmart (pictured below) where through my channel I’ve done fun tests checking out the clothes and wearing them for a week and there were no crazy surprises.
Forever 21 – not a a catfish for style or quality but I’m outside of their junior plus size range so somethings work for me and somethings don’t. Fair enough. I’ve also recently tried Charlotte Russe – the styles aren’t the most forward and are kind of hit or miss for me taste wise but it’s not terrible. The sizing is decently accurate – although everything is SHORT, short dresses, short waisted…not the best for my very long body. You can check out a recent video of me trying on pieces in their dressing room below!
The wild cards have been the Asian sites like SheIN (the actual worst clothing in the history of the world), Fashion Nova which I know people love but even the videos I’ve seen where people actually fit the extremely small items, the quality control is non existent. I had my own bizarro zipper fail!
All in all, have the lesser expensive places I’ve shopped been worth it? Kinda… You get what you pay for. If you find a place that you trust to be consistent with quality and sizing, go for it! ASOS is my jam! But if you pay $10 for a dress, the cost to make it was $4 and that isn’t always going to work out. Pay $10 ten times or $100 once.
Cheap, cute and totally worth it – I think. Not a psychic guys…