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Bold and Audacious at Any Sizeby Pamela Post They finish each other’s sentences in the manner of a long-time married couple. But Barb Wilkins and Lorna Ketler are cousins, not romantic partners—though they do say being in business together for almost nine years has been like a marriage. Their path to business success has been unorthodox. They started from scratch with next to no capital, no formal business training—just a whole lot of passion and chutzpah. You could say they were bold and audacious. Bodacious, in fact. Bodacious is more than just the name of their successful Main Street clothing store. It’s who they are—and who they would like to invite other women to be. “We don’t use the term ‘plus size,’” Barb says emphatically. “We carry from size 10—which is not a plus size—up to size 24.” “Exactly,” says Barb. “Bodacious is not about size; it embodies an attitude more than anything else.” And attitude is a quality these two curvy cousins have in abundance. Now in their early 40s, they grew up in rural Chilliwack in modest means, spending every Sunday at their Mennonite grandmother’s house where all the aunts and cousins would congregate. Lorna and Barb always had a special bond. “We were a couple of barefoot little kids back then, running around the country. We were always interested in the same things. I remember going through Lorna’s trinkets, saying, ‘Ooh, I love this pendant.’ She’d say, ‘You have it.’ When we got older, we’d be in each other’s closets all the time, trying things on, swapping clothes.” But when the grown-up cousins got together, they’d go right back to their old love of playful fashion and visiting vintage and consignment stores, looking for the perfect thing and having fun doing it. “But we had some really frustrating experiences,” says Barb. “I remember us hitting 30 and realizing our body shapes weren’t exactly what we thought they would be, and maybe we’d put on some weight over the last 10 years, but still wanting to dress in a fun, fabulous way—and being completely flabbergasted at realizing nobody was catering to us. Here we were, finally with a little money in our pockets, going into stores, and there was nothing that fit us, and [we were] feeling offended by that. What was our option—Cotton Ginny?” “Barb and I started talking about it,” continues Lorna. “Like, what would be our dream shopping experience? How could we do it better?” After a year, they decided to move entirely to selling new and locally designed clothes. They found a new location on Main at East 28th and reopened Bodacious in its new incarnation. Eight years later, the store has all the sophistication that you would expect from a couple of Main Street fashionistas. It features their own Bodacious designer line: elegant signature wrap dresses, tops, and tunics in lusciously soft fabrics that can be mixed and matched. They use bamboo and other green and sustainable materials. Their signature Bodacious jeans were featured in New York’s In Style. Being contacted by the star-maker magazine was a watershed moment for the two former consignment gals. “It was like our ‘Oprah-call’ moment,” the two laugh. As the business has flourished, so has an ongoing dialogue between the two women and their customers about female body image. Lorna says working for women’s groups in her 30s changed a lot of her own negative self-talk. “I had never been surrounded by strong feminist women before. These groups showed me I could love myself, love my body the way it was. I learned a different language around talking about my body and about talking to women. At first, we just wanted to have a store with great clothes that would sell well, make women look good, a store that will be fun to shop in. But then we had all these women come in, talking about how they hated their bodies. We started—gently—challenging them, and having those conversations.” Barb and Lorna admit they’ve staged a few “self-loathing interventions” in the store, when they overhear women debasing their bodies in the change rooms or using language they think women need to discard. Barb remembers one woman coming in, taking a garment off the rack, and saying, “This is huge!” “And she was like a size 14. I came up to her and quietly said, ‘You know, there are a number of women in the store larger than you who wear this size. It’s not “huge”—it’s just a size. In fact, that’s my size.’ She said, ‘Oh, but you look great,’ and I said, ‘Thanks, so do you. But let’s not call it huge. It’s just a size.’” They’ve become a hit on the speakers’ circuit, talking to business groups and fashion schools. For a year, the cousins led the local Ladies Who Launch group, where women with business dreams put their ideas into an “incubator” and are guided and mentored by other women. “In that group, we learned that women often have a different way of running a business than men. And women often have a different definition of success,” says Barb. “For example, women multi-task, and for some of them success means being able to pick their kids up from school or being able to work three- or four-day weeks.” Work-life balance is a value the bodacious cousins share. They’ve had opportunities to open up additional stores in other cities but have decided that being on planes all the time is not in their business or life plans. Barb has a close friend, a young mother, living with cancer right now. “I am able to give her one day a week. I tell her, ‘Monday is your day. What do you want? What can I do for you? What can we do together?’ And I’ve come to realize that’s something in my ideal world that I always want to have—one day a week I can give to someone else.” What’s more, they’ve become ambassadors for the rights of women to love themselves unconditionally—even during their playtime. “Last summer, Barb and I went swimming every morning at Kits Pool. It was great. And I noticed in the shower afterwards, we would be showering off, naked, and sometimes little girls would look at us. And I said to Barb, ‘I almost feel like I’m doing a public service here. How often do these girls get to see a naked woman’s body that isn’t airbrushed or perfect?’” Such incidents were the inspiration for a recent article Lorna wrote on the Bodacious blog, titled “The Right to Bare Arms.” In the piece, she laments how so many women hate their arms, suffering through hot summers covered up. She recalls how a customer broke into tears, so happy she had found an outfit that showed her arms—and knowing she looked good. “She said, sobbing, ‘It’s been years since I showed my arms!’” “We want to see girls and women, regardless of their size, walk down the street, wearing fabulous clothes they love, with their heads held high,” says Barb.
Brittney Fisher, 24, is none of these things. But the Vernon native is one of the 10 top semi-finalists in a nationwide search to find Canada’s strongest, most self-assured, and “proud-to-be-plus” model. (Women less than a size 14 did not make the cut). The winner of Canada’s Plus Size Model search will be announced March 18 at LG Fashion Week in Toronto. She will get a one-year modeling contract, a $2,500 shopping spree, and a chance to be the signature model in a company’s ad campaign. (Perhaps even for Calvin Klein? In a fashion-forward move, the design house introduced a plus-size line of its iconic jeans and other separates in 2007.) plusmodelsearch.com Pamela Post is a Vancouver journalist and broadcaster who has learned to embrace her vertical space. |
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Scoffing at the notion that fashion is only for the rail-thin, Barb Wilkins and Lorna Ketler have made their mark on the tony Main Street boutique strip with Bodacious, a shop catering exclusively to voluptuous women who love chic clothes. The curvaceous cousins share with Pamela Post their take on female body image, the power that comes with loving yourself, and their call to women everywhere to “take up some space”
It’s About Time
