Today's guest is Corinne Fay from Substack newsletter, Big Undies. Corinne is also the co-host of the Indulgence Gospel with Virginia Sole-Smith, and the creator of SellTradePlus. We have a chat about her love of denim shirts, creating community online, and the importance of letting go of perfectionism so we can have fun with clothing.

Episode Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

You're listening to Intuitive Style, where we believe everyone has style. Through conversations with inspiring guests, we explore how to tune into our style intuition so that we can dress authentically and live fully.

Today's guest is Corinne Fay from Substack newsletter, Big Undies. Corinne is also the co-host of the Indulgence Gospel with Virginia Sole-Smith, and the creator of SellTradePlus. Corinne, welcome to the show.

Corinne: Thanks, I'm really excited to be here.

Maureen: Can you tell us a little bit about SellTrade Plus specifically and the gap that you are hoping to address by starting that platform?

Corinne: Yeah, so I started SellTradePlus in, I think it was 2018, a long time ago now. And I was really addicted to a few different resale accounts on Instagram. But I was like, I was feeling like I was seeing... Dozens if not hundreds of posts for stuff that wasn't in my size for every one that was in my size. And I also felt like there were certain things that like I needed to be able to buy clothes in that way, such as like garment measurements that weren't always there. And I was also thinking, like, if I went to a thrift store and I were shopping for myself, I would just go, I would walk in the door, I would go straight to the section that was my size. So I was just like, why not have a resale account that's just plus size? So we can kind of narrow in a little bit.

Maureen: And the accounts that you were talking about, were those on social media?

Corinne: Yeah, I was looking at Noihsaf, which used to be strictly Instagram. And, um, there was also, I think there were actually a couple, like, sell/trade slow fashion accounts. Like, I know there was one specifically for Elizabeth Suzanne and maybe a couple others. I was just going to say I was like. I really liked those spaces and I liked the community, but I just kind of felt like I could maybe narrow down a little bit.

Maureen: I wanted to start our conversation today with that topic because I think it can be really hard to understand or explain for someone who isn't familiar with being excluded by secondhand shopping or availability of your size. I think it can be really hard to understand like just how real that issue is and I just wanted to really set the stage. Anyone can struggle with their body image and there's like no hierarchy of who can experience that. But when it comes to actually being able to find the clothing that you want to wear, there are some very real challenges if you live in a larger body. And I was just wondering if you could like share any of your experience with that and, and maybe on the optimistic side, you know, have you been able to set out or have you been able to accomplish any of the goals that you set out to with that platform, being able to, uh, create more of that community that you're looking for?

Corinne: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest and best part of SellTradePlus for me has been the community aspect. Like, I feel like there are so many people that I'm just, like, friends with now, you know? I mean, as... As much as you can be with people from the internet, but um, yeah, and I have, I've also, like, met people in real life through SellTradePlus. Like, I have a little group of friends here that, uh, We'll meet up, like, a couple times a year to do, like, in-person plus size clothing swaps. And a lot of those people I found through SellTradePlus. Um, but yeah, it is, like, a huge challenge. Um... Yeah, it's definitely not over. And I also... This is maybe not exactly what you're asking, but I think there can be so much sort of, like, perfectionism and moralism around, like, shopping in the correct way, like, only buying... Yeah, only buying secondhand or only buying from, like, small ethical businesses. And, like, for me, in my body, like, it's just not always realistic.

Especially because, like, so many of... Those brands, like, you also can't try on, and even if they do offer expanded sizes, sometimes, like, they don't have the budgets to, like, test them on a whole variety of plus-size bodies, so it's just, like... It's a real challenge, and I think the sort of perfectionism aspect, like, doesn't really do us any favors.

Maureen: With that in mind, how, how have you handled that perfectionist mindset? I mean, I know we're all work in progress, but is there anything that you do to navigate that, that perfectionism?

Corinne: I mean, it's a constant challenge. I just try to like give myself grace in the same way that I would like someone, you know, a friend, someone I like and care about. I think we're all just doing the best we can out here. And just knowing, like, we're just doing what we can.

Maureen: Yeah, I feel the exact same way. I mean, I think what I'm trying to do with Intuitive Style is really highlight that there's no right way to dress or participate in slow fashion. There's no right or wrong way to dress, period. I think, yeah, just trying to move away from that perfectionism and I think a lot of that comes from this place of, like, self-compassion, like what you were just saying about, you know, treating yourself like how you might treat a friend totally resonates with me. I think it's a really good way to go.

Corinne: I feel like similar to dieting and diet culture, the thing that that kind of removes from eating and food is the joy element. A lot of we can get from style and fashion and clothes is joy and pleasure and like, fun and novelty. And so if we restrict ourselves in this way of only shopping from the right places or in the right ways….I think we have to leave room for the ability to have fun with it.

Maureen: I'd love to hear more about that because I've listened to quite a few episodes of Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith. There seems to be a real strong theme of seeing diet culture in so many different aspects of popular culture and I was just wondering if you could share a little bit about kind of how that theme arose, and what, what you think about that?

Corinne: So I also host the Burnt Toast podcast with Virginia Sole-Smith. And I think, I feel like she's really, you know, the expert and the person who has come up with the framing of, like... Is XYZ a diet in a lot of ways? I think it's just like we're talking about kind of like it's, it's the way that perfectionism can kind of like pervade all aspects of our lives. And I think, I sort of think of diet culture as like being under the perfectionism umbrella, like it's kind of like one part of that. And I think a lot of other people have sort of like identified that as being like under an even greater umbrella of like. White supremacy or like capitalism, you know, like all this stuff kind of goes hand in hand. But yeah, I, I, I think for me, it's complicated. It's like, how do you hold it? Multiple true things at the same time. Like, it's true, like, fast fashion is bad for the world. And, like, I do want to be able to, like, have fun with clothes sometimes.

Maureen: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. I know, and it's so, it's so much easier to write, uh, you know, a post about fast fashion is bad, like, end of story. And I think it's so much easier to write that. And then it's so much more difficult to bring nuance to that. Going back to Substack a little bit, one of... my favorites of your posts on Big Undies, you touch on exclusion within fashion Substack and specifically how the most popular writers on the platform linked to high-end fashion with limited size offerings. So can you talk a little bit more about, you know, how you decided to write that post and, you know, how you feel about it today?

Corinne: Yeah, I kind of sat with that post for a while because I was really feeling like I wanted to like quantify what I was feeling in a way like I was feeling like I'm following all these people who are like talking about really cool clothes I love what they're talking about and like none of it is for me basically. But I was also like, am I just, like, do I just have a really narrow, like, am I just not finding the right people or, you know, like, am I missing the links where they're linking to something above a size 10? And, I don't think I was missing that for the most part. Um, but yeah, I don't know. It's a hard feeling.

Like, I feel like there's a part of me that, like, Just wants to know what cool people like. Like, I jus