As we approach September, it’s time to start looking ahead into fall. To make sure you’re not caught by surprise by the suddenly chilly weather, get a head-start on your wardrobe for the next season now. To help with that, secondhand retailer The RealReal’s current online sale is brimming with fall favorites.
With discounts of up to $75 off, ahead, the best finds on The RealReal’s sale.
At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.
Jacquemus Jacquemus Halterneck Long Dress, $, available at TheRealReal
Gucci Gucci Vintage GG Canvas Jackie O Hobo, $, available at TheRealReal
A.L.C. A.L.C. Patterned Scoop Neck Sweater, $, available at TheRealReal
Jacquemus Jacquemus Crew Neck Short Sleeve Crop Top, $, available at TheRealReal
Yves Saint Laurent Yves Saint Laurent Vintage Plaid Print Blazer, $, available at TheRealReal
Staud Staud Embossed Shirley Tote, $, available at TheRealReal
Calvin Klein Calvin Klein Collection Blazer w/ Tags, $, available at TheRealReal
Ganni Ganni Mock Neck Three-Quarter Sleeve Blouse, $, available at TheRealReal
Before the start of the pandemic, Rosy Alvarez was already sick of wearing bras. They were too tight on her rib cage and incredibly uncomfortable, sometimes painful after a long day of work. Although she had gotten her bust measured for the appropriate bra size, she could never quite find one that fit properly.
Now Alvarez has decided to ditch them altogether — and has no plan to go back to fastening one on every morning. “There’s no reason to wear them,” the 25-year-old Brooklynite says.
The pandemic has been a period of personal reckoning. We’re questioning old habits, traditions, and systems that no longer serve us For many women, the idea of wearing a tight-fitting, pain-inducing contraption made of wire and padding is one that’s stopped making sense. Some, like Alvarez, have closed their bra drawers for good, while others are looking for new ways to add support to their boobs. And brands are meeting them halfway.
Although people are not going out as much as they once did, and attending Zoom meetings does not require a bra, consumer desire for bust support hasn’t waned so much as it’s changed. Demand for less constricting bralettes has grown significantly higher than for push-up and wired bras since 2019, according to the market research firm Edited. The scales have tipped to the point where bralettes and sports bras make up the majority of women’s undergarments in the United States and the United Kingdom.
“So much of this is driven by consumer choice,” says Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian and associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Things get shuffled out of the American wardrobe because the social benefits of wearing them fade enough for you to put your own preferences forward.”
The pandemic is only the tipping point. The past decade has seen a sea change that dictated the future of the garment. Once the ultimate sensual fantasy on the Victoria’s Secret runway, it has re-emerged as a comfy basic available to every skin tone, size, and shape thanks to inclusive brands like Savage x Fenty and Skims.
The bra entered the limelight in the 1920s, when stiff brassieres became a piece separate from the corsets and girdles worn by women in the previous century. It wasn’t until the sexual revolution of the mid-20th century, though, that the bra as we know it was born. The new wave of bras were less barrier-like than their stiff predecessors. “It’s a lot easier to get a hand under [a bra] than a girdle,” says Clemente. By the 1970s and 1980s, the fitness craze and new fabric technologies gave rise to the sports bra, which, according to Clemente, was first made from two men’s jockstraps by a runner who wanted support practicing during her runs. The heavy sexualization of the bra came in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the rise of Victoria’s Secret’s fashion show and its collective of “angels,” as the super-thin models were called. “It’s a lifestyle, it’s Gisele Bundchen with wings on her back,” says Clemente. “It’s the ‘fantasy bra.’ ”
The story has changed dramatically thanks to calls for inclusion over the past decade. With Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty leading the pack of modern underwear lines, a new set of priorities and values helped reinvent the bra into something accessible and user-friendly. The launch of Savage x Fenty and its subsequent fashion shows, which are now streamed on Amazon Prime, allowed individuals to rethink their relationship with lingerie brands, asking for less aspirational imagery, more inclusive sizing and styles, and an array of genderless items. The consumers clearly appreciated this new line of thinking: Savage x Fenty is now valued at $1 billion, according to Forbes.
As the pandemic changed our world, so did the need and uses for bras. “The idea that women aren’t interacting with the public changes the kind of undergarments they’re going to want,” says Clemente. “That’s just completely logical.” Last year, lifelong friends Gigi Kitei and Lisa Cook launched Free Reign, an apparel brand geared for smaller-busted women (sizes 32A to 36B) that sells tank tops with a built-in bra, made with sustainable yarn. Within a day, they had doubled their Kickstarter campaign goal of $10,000. “We were always frustrated with the awkward reality of not wanting to wear push-ups or artificial bras,” says Kitei. “There were not a lot of options for women like us who wanted comfort.” Much like a sports tank top, Free Reign’s Everyday Tank ($74) features thick straps and an inner bra with molded cups, as well as a knit-hem finish.
Clemente says that the new, mostly homebound, normal is a ripe time for women to experiment with going braless, and for brands like Free Reign to flourish. “We have a much higher tolerance for not trying to distort people’s bodies,” she says. But freeing the boob in a society that still punishes fat and bigger-chested women is not an equal-opportunity endeavor. Or at least, easier said than done. “There’s a lot of people that do use [bras] for comfort because they want to support their boobs,” says Clemente, adding that support doesn’t have to mean discomfort and distortion.
That’s where bralettes and sports bras come in, eating up a sizable portion of the undergarment market for the past few years. Brands like Eberjey, Commando, Intimissimi, Lively, Savage x Fenty, and AnaOno are filling the gap for consumers who want a bra that fits them, not society’s standards.
AnaOno’s founder Dana Donofree says that the brand is “boob-inclusive,” adding that their products are designed for people with “one breast, two breasts, no breasts or new breasts.” In the past decade, Donofree has grown AnaOno from a bra company to a brand that offers underwear, loungewear, and apparel, catering to this inclusive mission. She says that the market has slowly caught up with her innovative thinking, largely because more women are launching their own brands. “I always laugh because none of us were comfortable in a bra, to begin with,” she says. “We kept letting men design them for us. So, of course, we were uncomfortable.”
Still, with all the progress made in how breasts are catered to, Clemente warns that the bigger problem is a societal conditioning to seeing “young perky boobs.”
Alvarez says she never stopped to question the bra in the 14 years since her mother gave her one. “It was a symbol of ‘Hey, you are starting to get boobs, you should wear this,’” she says. “And we never had a conversation about it.” Now, she’s rethinking her relationship to the bra. As a small-chested woman, she’s realized she has no true reason for a bra. “If there’s no functional purpose or if they’re not relieving an issue, then there is no need for them.”
Her journey to go braless did come with some awkward moments. Even converting to bralettes made her feel “nude and exposed.” But, eventually, she learned how to navigate fashion to give her confidence while going braless, no matter other people’s perceptions. But the defining moment was admitting to herself that she just enjoyed the feeling of going unfettered. “I love it so much,” she says. “I don’t see myself going back.”
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In the non-fashion world, the term “plus-size” is used to describe anyone size 16 and beyond. Brands and designers take greater liberties with the moniker. Ever eager to win a badge of “inclusivity” and to grab a piece of the plus-size market — estimated to have a global annual worth of $194 billion — certain members of the industry are playing fast and loose with the definition.
In 2020, New York-based model Elianah Sukoenig told the digital publication Byrdie that a modeling agency she had worked with labeled her as “plus-size,” despite the fact that she was a size 0. After being offered a new contract by the “well-known New York agency,” Sukoenig said that she was sent to two separate test shoots that were expecting a plus-size model. Both clients were understandably disappointed when she arrived. “My book went up a few weeks later online, and there I was, [listed] on the curve division,” she said. (A model’s book is the same as their portfolio.) “At a size 0.”
While this is an extreme example, it’s not unusual in the fashion world for a model who is not a size 16 or up to appear in plus-size campaigns. “The models that we see being used for plus-size sponsorships, e-commerce photography, lookbooks, [and more] aren’t plus-size, they are mid-size [typically categorized as size 8 to 14],” says plus-size fashion influencer Stephanie Yeboah, who took to Twitter in May to address the issue. “Here’s a thought: seeing as all the ‘plus-size models’ used by fashion brands are actually mid-size models, maybe use them in straight-size fashion campaigns alongside the [size 0, 2, and 4 models],” she tweeted. “And use fat models to promote fat fashions.”
Here’s a thought: seeing as all the ‘plus size models’ used by fashion brands are actually mid-sized models, maybe use them in straight sized fashion campaigns alongside the size 4-8’s.
And use fat models to promote fat fashions instead.
— στεφανια Yeboah (@StephanieYeboah) May 24, 2021
By doing so, brands could offer visibility to a range of different body types, from the entire plus-size spectrum to straight-size women that aren’t a size 0, 2, or 4, and provide service to all their customers. “If you are able to find clothes in that range, then surely you should have models that represent the scope of sizes in that collection,” Yeboah tells Refinery29.
Alexandra Waldman, the co-founder of size-inclusive clothing brand Universal Standard, agrees — and she’s using her business to change the narrative by ensuring that models of every size are present on her company’s website and in its campaigns. “We’re not going to do a song and dance around it, we’re simply going to present it to the world the way we think it should always have been, and then wait for everyone else to kind of catch up,” she says.
She isn’t only talking about sizes. The skewed representation blighting the industry includes body types, too, with a majority of the models chosen for plus-size campaigns having an hourglass body shape. Clients want models “to be proportional, so the waist is between nine and 11 inches different from the hips,” says Samantha Granger, a curve- and plus-size modeling agent at Bicoastal Management. According to Granger, size doesn’t matter so much if a model’s proportions show a 10-inch difference between their waist and hip measurements. That way, the samples are bound to fit them. “Just like the straight-size [models], there are some guidelines,” she says, referring to the models that get picked.
“I want to see what an outfit actually looks like on someone that has a belly and big arms or flabby arms — someone that may not have a body shape that is an extreme hourglass.”
Therein lies the issue. By singling out certain people — based on the size that they wear or their body’s proportions — as the ideal that should be used as fashion’s blueprint, those who fall outside of that archetype are excluded. “When I go onto a website and see, for instance, a bodycon or mini dress, I don’t want to see that on somebody that’s a size 12 with a flat stomach, a small waist, and big hips, because that body type doesn’t adequately portray the plus-size bodies that are moving around society at the moment,” says Yeboah. “I want to see what an outfit actually looks like on someone that has a belly and big or flabby arms — someone that may not have a body shape that is an extreme hourglass.”
If more than half of the women in the U.S. wear a size 16 or up, it stands to reason that models should represent that. But after decades of the fashion world applauding the tiniest and most supposedly “proportional” body types, digging our way out of this dominant paradigm — and in turn, teaching society that there is no one type of beauty — is going to take time.
“Every time I see [Girlfriend Collective] campaigns, a part of me just wants to cry because they use a plus-size model that’s a size 24 or 26 and you can just see her belly and her back rolls and I think: that is what I look like.”
The tides do appear to be turning, however slowly, with brands like Torrid, Girlfriend Collective, Wray NYC, and Universal Standard employing models that are representative of the entire plus-size range. “When I started booking [plus models] full-time close to two and a half years ago, the [women] that were being requested [for plus-size jobs] most frequently were size 14,” Granger says. Today, Granger says that requests for sizes 16 and 18 are much more prevalent, with some brands hiring size 26 or 28 models.
“Every time I see [Girlfriend Collective] campaigns, a part of me just wants to cry because they use a plus-size model that’s a size 24 or 26 and you can just see her belly and her back rolls and I think: that is what I look like,” says Yeboah. “Now, I can see what an outfit will look like on me, and therefore I want to purchase it.”
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Gap and Zara better watch their backs, because Target’s quickly becoming the go-to brand for jeans on TikTok. Last week, Tiana Peña, a 23-year-old Los Angeles-based TikToker with more than 45,000 followers, posted a video of herself in the Target dressing room, where she was trying on a pair of utility-style jeans from the brand’s beloved Wild Fable line. Superimposed over the video: “Damn, okay Target.” The pants, called Super High-Rise Utility Straight Jeans, feature all the traits that Gen Zers are looking for in denim right now, from the straight leg to the rugged light wash. Oh, and they only cost $25.
“A couple weeks ago, it was my first day of work and I showed up wearing some old skinny jeans — the type you store deeply in the back of your closet — because I figured, whatever, it’s just work,” Peña tells Refinery29, noting that her job’s dress code restricts her from wearing ripped jeans, thus eliminating the other denim options in her wardrobe. (She’s currently working at a retail distribution center, where employees dress more for utility purposes than individual style.) The day was a disaster, she says, in part because she didn’t feel comfortable in what she was wearing. “I went out later that day — at 9 p.m. to be exact, when the only place open was Target — to buy a new pair.” Knowing that the store had good, cheap jeans, she says it seemed like a solid choice for a pair she planned on only wearing to work. “I looked around, saw those jeans, and was [instantly] amazed,” she says. “They made my waist look snatched!”
After a more successful second day on the job in her new denim — “I was feeling so cute,” she says — Peña knew what she had to do next: Share her find on TikTok.
In the 11 days since she posted her video, it has already garnered more than 71,000 likes and 816,000 views, elevating it to hallowed viral status. In the comments, hundreds of interested viewers have expressed their interest in buying the jeans, as well as their gratitude toward Peña for introducing the pair to them. “Omg they’re so bomb I loved them,” viewer Stephanie Connell wrote. Another, named Julie, wrote,” Sigh… *Opens the Target app.*”
“Okay, I saved the video, you can take it down now,” wrote Kanami, an apparent advocate for TikTok gatekeeping. But so far, interested shoppers shouldn’t worry. Though in-store options do appear to be selling out quickly — within 50 miles of Manhattan, only five stores sell the jeans, and there are a mere eight pairs available across the shops — the online selection is available in every size from 00 to 18. Of course, with the rate Peña’s video is growing in popularity, that might not be the case for long.
Shop the Wild Fable’s $25 Utility Straight Jeans, below.
At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
