Hell, I was wearing a sweater from Walmart yesterday. But I’m not trying to be a hypocrite – I definitely shop in the mall and wear all kinds of shit. Luckily I work with such a great team, and because of that we didn’t have to compromise on anything, like on making it in America, except for budget. What else has been different with producing your own line? It’s really crazy how much work goes into making things independently. We’re just saying, ‘Actually, there’s nothing wrong with that.’ You know - oh you know, girl. We’re repurposing the language, really, putting it in a different context and making it current – we’re trying to take away all these words that people have used to try to hurt me for years.
With this line, I can be like,’These are clothes for fat people,’ and feel good about saying it. You can be fat positive, but there’s so much fear around that word. I’m glad that we did it in England because I feel like there’s more freedom, but there were still limitations and fears. You’d worked on clothing lines before this, right? I did two capsule collections and it was great. So that made me come around to this line: I was like, ‘There’s no better time than now.’ If you want it to be done for you, you’re gonna wait forever. Being older now, you realize idealism by itself isn’t enough, basically. There are stores that are my favorites, but I can’t wear any of it. You just have to be open when you don’t have the luxury of walking into any store. I still have that mentality: ‘Those are your church clothes, don’t wear that.’ But I will shop anywhere, like a-ny-where.
I’m not the kind of person to wear something fancy at my house during the day. Just doing all the things that you already saw in your head, but you might not have felt comfortable doing.ĭo you still thrift now that you’ve fallen in with some pretty notable designers? Oh yeah. But punk opened my mind to a whole different thing, which was letting go of shame and embracing the inner part of you that’s expressive and crazy. We were miracle workers like that, really resourceful.
Beth ditto update#
Tons of stuff that was hella outdated, which you’d have to update somehow. Right, we always thrifted – it was a very common occurrence in my household to get clothes from my mom’s coworkers’ kids who had outgrown them. I’m sure making your own clothes, though, was pretty common once you got into the Riot Grrrl scene on the West coast. I will still go into maternity shamelessly, but it’s the fact that I don’t have to resort to it, but that I am able to find it, that makes such a difference. When I was 11, I had to go to church wearing a maternity dress. My granny made a lot of my clothes when I was little, like my little Christmas pageant dresses. I’ve always been chubby my whole life, and my mom was constantly having to sew things for me. You’ve gotten more into fashion recently, but how did it all start for you? What was it like shopping and finding clothes growing up in Arkansas? As a kid – and there were so many kids – we didn’t have a lot of money at all, if any. She did it all, of course, in that signature Southern twang. Before heading to New York for its debut, she took a break to talk about what it was like thrifting during the Riot Grrrl years, leaving her band the Gossip, and adding designer to her long list of jobs. Fresh from starring in and possibly stealing the Marc Jacobs spring show, where the former Gossip frontwoman strutted down the Ziegfeld Theater looking like Mae West, the 34-year-old is rolling out an 11-piece collection today in sizes 14-28, available on her website and at Selfridges in London. A self-identifying “fat, feminist lesbian from Arkansas” who’s been altering her own clothes and preaching body positivity for decades, there’s hardly anyone more suited to changing plus-size fashion and the way the industry looks at body size. It’s about time the rock star Beth Ditto started a clothing line.
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