When I opened up anoth­er branch of Wan­da Har­land, Joan­na inter­viewed me all about it, so I fig­ured with House of Boom about to launch, it was time for me to return the favour.

Okay what’s going on? You’re launching your own clothing label?

a group of fat people in colourful a-line skirts and t-shirts that say "HOUSE OF BOOM" on them
 

Yes! I got fed up with the lack of eth­i­cal­ly-made options for fat peo­ple, and after years of sit­ting around say­ing “some­one should do some­thing about it”, well, I’ve done some­thing about it. House of Boom clothes come in sizes 16–30, are made right here in Welling­ton (in Berham­pore specif­i­cal­ly) and every­one involved in their mak­ing is on good wages (apart from me) . The clothes are all cot­ton — and every­thing has pock­ets.

I prob­a­bly need to put in a qual­i­fi­er here — the gar­ments them­selves are eth­i­cal­ly made. The fab­rics though, that’s anoth­er sto­ry. I bought them at var­i­ous fab­ric sup­pli­ers around Welling­ton, so I don’t know their ori­gins. I hope as the label grows I can get fur­ther up the sup­ply chain and get eth­i­cal fab­rics too.

What does House of Boom look like?

Bright colours! First and fore­most, I’ve done clothes that I want to wear. There’s just four items — a t‑shirt, a skirt and two dress­es — but they all come in a range of tex­tures and colours and pat­terns. The first sea­son is called In The Begin­ning There Was Boom — but there’s no par­tic­u­lar cohe­sion to it. I’m throw­ing things at the wall and see­ing what sticks. It’s not high fash­ion — it’s prac­ti­cal basics in nat­ur­al fibres. And I get to name clothes after women that inspire me. Yes I did name my skirt after myself, thanks Snoop!

Group of fat women in great sack dresses

You use the words plus-size and fat interchangeably?

I sure do. I use the word fat freely because to me it’s a neu­tral term like being tall or blonde. It’s lazy jerks who use it as short­hand for lazy or greedy. And I use plus-size for the SEO of it, but if we take stats from the US about how 68% of women are a size 14 or over, you have to won­der why ⅔ of peo­ple are oth­ered. Except you don’t real­ly have to won­der, because, as you know, patri­archy and bull­shit stan­dards of beau­ty. And now for the com­men­ta­tors to go “it’s about your health” and for me to tell them to read this arti­cle then delete their hate.

What’s the Wellington hook into this?

With­out the vil­lage nature of Welling­ton and all the bloody excel­lent peo­ple con­tained with­in, I don’t think I’d be able to have launched Boom. Peo­ple here seem real­ly hap­py to work togeth­er to help oth­ers suc­ceed. I got intro­duced to the amaz­ing Iona who’s been my pat­tern-mak­er/pro­duc­tion man­ag­er by Elisha from Nisa, which was vital because I have no gar­ment knowl­edge at all.  Black Dog Brew­ery & Matahi­wi Estate are help­ing me out with the launch and I get to order Pome­gran­ate cater­ing for the event which allows me to sup­port the busi­ness­es that I think are doing good too. And of course, some of the best babes in town have mod­eled for me.

group of fat women in super comfy knit dresses

Where can people get it?

I real­ly real­ly real­ly want­ed to open up a phys­i­cal shop and have it be a glo­ri­ous expe­ri­ence, unlike oth­er stores that hide their plus size cloth­ing at the back, but my dream-crush­ing accoun­tant said no no no to that. Instead, I’m hav­ing a pop-up on Decem­ber 15 & 16  to launch the clothes, because I real­ly want peo­ple to be able to try them on, and after that, they’ll be avail­able from the web­site.

Now it’s not just House of Boom label you’ll be stock­ing at your pop-up is it?

I’m so glad you asked that Martha! I’ll also be stock­ing a care­ful­ly curat­ed range of sec­ond hand plus-size cloth­ing, both in order to make sure that fast fash­ion gets a sec­ond life and also to be more afford­able, because did you know that fat women get paid less than ‘reg­u­lar’ women?

Also there’ll be prints from the love­ly Ruby Alice Rose, as well as the jew­ellery from Throw­ing Feath­ers, Twigg and Fan­cy Lady Indus­tries, as well as the amaz­ing knick­ers from Fan­ny Adams. You don’t even have to be fat to buy beau­ti­ful things!

Come along okay? Cool.

Fanny Adams knickers on fat babes

House of Boom plus-size cloth­ing pop-up sale

  • Sat­ur­day 15 Decem­ber / Sun­day 15 Decem­ber, 10am-4pm
  • 189a Grant Road, Thorn­don
  • Eft­pos or cred­it card only please, no cash!
  • Keep an eye on the Face­book event for any updates