“You Can't Do That.”

Last week, I shared how 200 conversations outside Lane Bryant confirmed what my research had suggested: women with curves wanted more choices, more style and more places to shop.

By then, the idea that would become Kiyonna was starting to feel less like a school project and more like a real opportunity.

But before I could move forward, I was about to hear something I didn’t expect from someone whose opinion I deeply respected:

“You can’t do that.”

By this point, I thought I had done my homework. I had the numbers, I had talked to the customer, and I could see the gap.

The research had taken me from one conversation with a friend, to the basement of Doheny Library, to a clipboard outside Lane Bryant. Every step kept pointing me in the same direction.

Women wanted fashion that reflected their personalities, their lifestyles and their taste – not a separate version of style simply because of the number on the label.

So in my 21-year-old college-student mind, the next question seemed pretty obvious:

Why couldn’t we make the kinds of clothes a woman in a size 6 would be excited to wear, but engineer them specifically to fit a woman with curves?

I was convinced I had found something. And I couldn’t wait to tell someone who really knew the fashion business.

I was still a student at USC, and through my entrepreneurship program I had the opportunity to learn from an incredibly accomplished woman in the fashion industry. I admired her. I learned a tremendous amount from her, and when she spoke, I listened.

So one day, armed with all of my research, I approached her. I started explaining what I had discovered: there was a huge population of women being underserved. I had researched the numbers. I had gone directly to customers. I had asked them what they wanted.

And I had an idea.

I wanted to create beautiful, fashionable clothing for women who wore larger sizes.

Before I could really finish explaining it, she stopped me. “You can’t do that.”

I remember being stunned. Not because I expected everyone to love my idea, but because I genuinely wanted to understand: Why not?

I had the numbers. I had talked to the customer. The need was clearly there. So what exactly was stopping everyone?

As I listened, I began to understand that the obstacle wasn’t really demand. It was whether the fashion industry believed there was a market worth serving.

Back then, there was no e-commerce path around the traditional retail system. If you wanted to build a meaningful clothing brand, you generally needed buyers and retailers to believe in the concept first. And the prevailing wisdom was that buyers simply wouldn’t take a chance on fashionable clothing designed specifically for women with curves.

The customers were saying yes. Why was the industry saying no?

And remember, this was 1996. There was no body-positivity movement filling our social feeds. There weren’t thousands of women online proudly showing the world that style doesn’t stop at a certain size. Social media didn’t exist. The conversation around women’s bodies was very different, and the fashion industry reflected it.

I could have listened to her. There were probably a hundred perfectly reasonable reasons to decide she knew better than I did. After all, she had far more experience than I did, and I was still in college. I had never manufactured a collection, let alone run a fashion company.

But instead of backing down, something clicked: If the customer wanted it and the numbers supported it, then maybe the problem wasn’t the idea.

Maybe the problem was the way the industry saw the customer.

Suddenly, “You can’t do that” didn’t feel like the end of my research. It felt like the answer to it.

This was exactly why someone needed to do it.

Looking back 30 years later, I’m actually grateful for that conversation. Not because it was easy to hear, but because it helped me understand what we were really up against.

Kiyonna wasn’t simply going to be about making clothes in larger sizes. We were going to have to challenge the idea that women with curves should have fewer choices in the first place. That their bodies somehow dictated what they were allowed to wear. That beautiful design, thoughtful fit and great style belonged only to certain sizes.

I didn’t believe that then. And 30 years later, I certainly don’t believe it now.

So I kept going.

The business plan began turning into something real, and before long I joined forces with two partners, Yvonne and Donna. Together, the three of us began taking those first very uncertain steps toward building a clothing company.

Kim + Yvonne + Donna = Kiyonna

At the time, of course, none of us knew what the next 30 years would look like. We were simply trying to create something we believed should exist.

And before long, we would get one very expensive piece of evidence that the women I had interviewed outside Lane Bryant weren’t the only ones looking for something different.

What happens when a tiny fashion company gets mentioned in a major magazine?

Spoiler: Our 800 number started ringing. And ringing. And ringing.

Explore Kiyonna’s journey through the years →