H&M Is Expanding Its Plus-Size Offering With Help From Tess Holliday

In an era when plus-size representation is shrinking before our eyes on the runways and the sales racks, H&M US is pushing back. The brand has brought on model Tess Holliday as the company’s size and inclusivity consultant, and introduced expansion of their plus collection. “H&M embraces inclusion as a business imperative. H&M’s evolution and progress on extended sizing reflects our commitment and focuses on challenges faced, progress made and more progress to come,” says Donna Dozier Gordon, H&M’s Head of Inclusion and Diversity for Region Americas.

The expansion will feature products in sizes up to 4XL for women and 3XL for men, rolling out across the country in store and online. Prior to this expansion, H&M’s full womenswear and menswear assortment sizes only went up to XL in stores and online, with a select assortment for womenswear in sizes 3XL- 4XL online as part of H&M+.

 Additionally, shopping in person and online will be a more inclusive experience, with 2X’s stocked in store, and prioritized search tabs on their website and a commitment to increasing size diversity in their models. 

“Our mission as a brand is to make style accessible to everyone, and this is a key piece of that,” Dozier Gordon says by email. “Tess is helping us evaluate how we speak to and best represent this shopper in the right way.”

Holliday, who has previously worked with H&M as a model in global campaigns (including one with Iggy Pop), was approached for a project in 2021, which included pieces that she was sized out of (Holliday wears a size 24, and the pieces for the project only went up to an XL).

“I reached out to H&M, and told them, this shouldn’t be happening. What can we do to fix it? What can we do to make sure that nobody else is going to have the experience that I’m having?” Holliday says over our call. “And, I was very surprised and relieved that not only did they fix the problem, they invested in it.”

Holliday signed on with H&M in a consultant role in August 2022, but despite the immense pride she felt for her work—stating “it has been one of the most meaningful things that I’ve done in my career” —she wasn’t sure the public would ever know about her role in the brand’s ongoing push for greater inclusion as until now, her consulting role was not made public. In advance of H&M’s size expansion announcement, we spoke to Tess about what this role means to her, what pieces she can’t wait to wear and what it’s like to be both jaded and hopeful when it comes to the future of plus fashion.