Cutting Shapes Club is the New Kid on the Block
- Cutting Shapes Club is the New Kid on the Block - March 13, 2019
- Check out these Body Positive Spaces - July 31, 2017
In this silly bizarre world, we are often told/shown that companies or labels don’t reaaally give a crap if you’re in a larger body.
A lot of us are very familiar with this. We can’t often buy clothes in our size from “regular” stores because it just isn’t an option. They make their clothes for people whose bodies are sometimes deemed better or more worthy than ours. Or if they do make clothes in size fat, they’re often uninteresting or focus on being “flattering”. Or try to somehow make us blend into the background.
So when fashion labels do things that actually SUPPORT fatties and give them amazing pieces of clothing, it is SUCH a wonderful feeling.
Cutting Shapes Club is a brand spanking new Australian label. My fat body is wiggling with happiness and I am squealing with glee (yes, both of those things literally did occur when my dresses arrived) about it. a company with a tagline like “Fat Threads 4 Dope Babes” is an incredibly welcome addition to the world of fashion (or Fatshion if you like a pun, which I do.)
Cutting Shapes Club went from a funky fattie’s pipedream to every fat girl’s reality due to the delightful Kobi Jae, who I am 98% certain is some kind of magical being – I know she’s a Slytherin, so there’s that.
Let’s go back to the Origin Story of Cutting Shapes Club. While chalking up talent points in both acting and singing for musical theatre, Kobi Jae began blogging and exploring fat activism and self-expression through fashion which filled her with joy and came to her very easily.
This was during the glory days of chronological Instagram posts when she also discovered, to her dismay, that cute comfy dresses in really loud, quirky prints weren’t more available in size fat, despite the fact that there were a lot of other people wanting (and struggling to find) similar things.
Thus, about three years ago, Kobi Jae gave herself a very stern pep talk. Since then she’s been painstaking researching all aspects of building a brand and running a business. Not to mention developing the dresses, and saving incredible amounts of money so she could personally fund this beast of a project.
A lot of people her age are investing in property and shares and all stuff “grown up” and that did give Kobi some moments of comparative inadequacy but she summed it up beautifully to me: I just have to remind myself – I’m investing in ME, and MY community. And that’s totes worth it.
Cutting Shapes Club currently has 4 dresses available – each with a unique print.
Originally Kobi wanted to make really kooky, out of the box stuff that hadn’t been seen in the plus world. However, her research kept showing that heaps of plus femmes just wanted a reliable and comfortable, “classic” silhouette.
Thus, the dress silhouette that provides the canvas for these beautifully designed prints is our old friend – the fit and flare. But with a twist.
After taking on all feedback from people, Kobi had to take a step back and trust her gut and make the stuff that she loved. That’s where the prints really came in to play. With that in mind, these four amazing prints were chosen to launch with.
Kobi wanted a wide cross-section of styles and interests in the mix and these particular prints also feel like “an expression of a part of herself” which, for me, definitely comes through with the help of some incredibly talented artists whose styles Kobi loved and thought would work well with the concept.
In addition to that, she wanted to make sure that she was supporting artists from marginalised communities, and that they were fat allies if not fat themselves.
The illustrations for the prints were commissioned by artists SPECIFICALLY for this label.
First up, we have Kit Scribbles who did the illustrations for The Lil Miss Meanie Dress (the Margot Meanie namesake and co-collaborator). Kobi Jae has loved Kit’s exquisitely detailed work for a really long time and knew their style would lend itself really well to some mystical line art.
Jacky Sheridan is the illustrator for the Riots Not Diets dress. Kobi Jae was blown away by Jacky’s awesome style and feminist overtones in basically everything she and they had a lot of fun brainstorming all the individual illustrations for that dress.
The illustrations on The Filthiest Dress Alive are done by one of Kobi Jae’s dearest friends and twin souls, Sam Pea – a fellow Melbourne dweller here in Australia. He absolutely KILLS this print and somehow managed to draw poop in a truly magnificent way.
Check out more of his incredible artwork on Instagram – especially this amazing treasure! Swoon.
Lastly, The Babysitter’s Sweet Can was illustrated by Kobi Jae herself. Along with being a Business Babe, she’s also got a background in graphic design up her sleeve, and intends to whip up some future pop culture inspired prints herself.
Even the sizing is exciting. Seriously.
The dresses go from size 1 to 6 and the measurements are so thoroughly listed on the Cutting Shapes Club website that it made me a little giddy with happiness.
There are also photos of different sized people wearing different sizes – so you can also check that out!
These dresses are not only super comfortable and easy to wear, they are an incredibly beautiful Fuck You to the societal mandate that you have to be a certain size, or if you ARE fat, be a “good fat”, and all the rhetoric that fat babes in the world hear on a daily basis.
*Quotes and information gathered from Kobi Jae under promise of caffeinated beverages.
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