My favorite clothing brands

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Being plus sized, it can be hard to find things that are both cute and comfortable in my size. And if I'm honest, I hate shopping any longer than necessary even when I'm with other people, so knowing where to find things in my size is crucial.

Most people who know me know I tend to wear T-shirts and basketball shorts. That tends to be the easiest fashion choice for me both personality-wise and for comfortable sizing, and I don't necessarily keep track of the brands my T-shirts come from.

But I do have to pay attention to specific brands when it comes to buying professional clothes.

Fortunately, I've mostly found my niche when it comes to specific brands to buy. To be clear, I don't have any deals or sponsorships, so anything I share is literally just based on my honest opinion here. With that said, let's take a look at some of my favorite clothing brands.

Walmart Brands

The two brands I've had the best luck with have been Terra & Sky and Time and Tru, both of which are Walmart brands. I stick mostly with Terra & Sky now, but a few of my clothes are still Time and Tru.

Both brands provide low-cost, comfortable plus-sized clothes I can wear both professionally and at home. My favorite shirt that I wear in most of my professional photos is from Terra & Sky.

AND1 Shorts

Despite my general lack of interest in sports, I'm a big fan of wearing basketball shorts. AND1 shorts in particular always have a fun variety of options in my size. I'm open to buying other brands, but AND1 shorts haven't failed me yet.

Shoes

Since I wear size 11-12 shoes, which not many stores seem to carry in person for women, I tend to settle for anything that fits, and I frequently buy shoes in the men's section. Likewise, most of my shoes have been tennis shoes because there seems to be slightly less size variation between brands.

Regardless, the brands I most frequently wore as a teenager were DC, Airwalk, and Converse. More recently, I've had good luck with Skechers and Under Armour. I can usually find something to suit my needs if I spend enough time in stores like Payless, Skechers, and Shoe Carnival.

Name-dropping fashion brands in music

Name-dropping fashion brands has been a staple of rap music ever since English rapper Slick Rick mentioned the fashion brands Gucci, Bally, and Polo in his and Doug E. Fresh's 1985 song "La Di Da Di."

In more recent decades, the trend of name-dropping fashion brands has spread into pretty much all genres of music, often as part of a mutually beneficial advertisement of whichever brands are mentioned.

Here are a few of my recent favorite songs that reference fashion brands.

Victoria's Secret

"Victoria's Secret" by Jax is more of a playful jab at the titular brand's influence on body image than an advertisement, but it's a fun song that does name-drop a popular brand. Spoiler alert: Victoria's secret is that "she was made up by a dude," specifically, "an old man who lives in Ohio."

Unholy

"Unholy" by Sam Smith and Kim Petras manages to drop pretty many of the most popular names in the fashion industry, from Fendi to Balenciaga to Prada and beyond. And the song is just generally very catchy.

Clickbait

The video above is a clip from the song "Clickbait" by Daz Black, The Midnight Beast, and Soheila. The video includes references to Versace, but it mostly seems to be a play on the popularity of name-dropping in rap and not an actual advertisement or endorsement. This shows how popular the trend is.

The impact of Anna Wintour on Vogue, pop culture

Anna Wintour at the 2005 New York Fall Fashion Week (Karin Bar).

Anna Wintour has been the editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988. She's been a constant in a world of passing trends, so much that her influence goes beyond the magazine itself.

Wintour was a real up and comer on various publications prior to joining the US edition of Vogue, and she was eventually used to take over and radically change Condé Nast magazines such as House & Garden and the UK edition of Vogue.

Even before working at Condé Nast, when previous Vogue editor Grace Mirabella asked Wintour what her dream job was during an interview, Wintour reportedly said, "Yours."

After her time at House & Garden, Wintour fulfilled that dream and succeeded Mirabella as Vogue's editor.

Wintour revamped the magazine by using less well-known models, mixing inexpensive clothes with high fashion, and changing the cover style from tight headshots taken indoors to outdoor shots that showed more of the body.

The best example of this change is seen in the first issue she published in November 1988, seen below. The cover shows 19-year-old model Michaela Bercu in a $50 pair of jeans and a $10,000 designer jacket.

Cover of the November 1988 issue of Vogue (Style).

Likewise, Wintour has inspired a variety of other aspects of pop culture. Namely, she is reportedly the inspiration for Miranda Priestly in "The Devil Wears Prada," Edna Mode in "The Incredibles," Fey Sommers in "Ugly Betty," and even Willy Wonka in 2005's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

One way or another, Anna Wintour is synonymous with Vogue and the high fashion industry.

'Ugly Betty' is a staple of '00s TV

Betty Suarez on the left and her actress America Ferrera on the right (Walt Disney Television/Getty Images).

"Ugly Betty" is a wonderfully whacky comedy series about the not-so-stylish Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) navigating the high fashion industry as the assistant to Mode magazine's editor-in-chief Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius).

The show tends to have the tone of a telenovela when it comes to drama, likely because it's based on the Colombian series "Yo soy Betty, la fea." This tends to work in the show's favor, as every instance of absurdity leaves me in stitches.

The show has everything from catty fashion quips to soft family moments, romance, murder plots, faked deaths, and LGBTQ+ and immigration narratives. The show really caters to all audiences, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

Ironically, I think the one thing that bothers me about "Ugly Betty" is the idea that Betty is ugly. While her fashion choices are certainly unique, they tend to align with her personality and aren't even that bad most times. Likewise, beyond the style, Betty herself just isn't ugly.

You can't convince me that America Ferrera is ugly no matter how you style her clothes, hair, or braces. In the above scene in particular, she looks great and would probably be "model perfect" if she took her glasses off and smiled without showing her braces.

And of course, some jokes probably wouldn't fly if the show was airing today. Namely, some of the jokes about Alexis Meade's (Rebecca Romijn) trans identity and the below scenes where it's implied that Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams) was "ugly Willie" when she had her original nose, hair, and skin tone.

Granted, this is all done with a satirical tone that addresses the same real-life issues, and there are plenty of scenes that call out bigotry and body shaming, so I feel like the show balances itself out in that regard even if the payoff takes a while.

There are also a number of interesting references to the real-life fashion industry, such as Fey Sommers seeming to be the show's equivalent of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, an episode addressing the use of fur in the fashion industry, and cameos from people such as model Naomi Campbell.

If you need a good laugh, I highly recommend this comedy staple.

'The Devil Wears Prada' cerulean sweater speech still lives in my head rent free

When I decided to have a fashion-themed week and write about "The Devil Wears Prada," the first thing that came to mind was Miranda Priestly's (Meryl Streep) iconic cerulean sweater speech, shown in the video above.

Even 17 years after the release of "The Devil Wears Prada," the scene sticks out to me. And I'm not alone in my interest: the speech has its own dedicated section on the movie's Wikipedia page with a range of article references from both journalists and people within the fashion industry.

While the movie's reference to specific collections that popularized the use of cerulean are entirely fictional, the concept stands: in some cases, there's a trickle-down effect in regard to high fashion eventually making its way to everyday fashion.

For example, The New York Times' chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman cited the speech and pointed out that "what might appear on a runway in the Musée Rodin (where Dior holds its shows) in July will affect what H&M does in August."

There are cases where the reverse is true, like designers being inspired by streetwear and the "trickle-up" effect of small brands becoming so popular they're no longer affordable for their original customer base.

Even still, the scene is so memorable because it's an epic takedown that forces Andy (Anne Hathaway) to rethink her perspective on fashion and why the industry is so particular in its choices. And let's be honest, we all love a good dragging every now and then.

It's also fun for the sake of character development to watch prickly characters having scenes like the cerulean sweater speech contrasted with their softer scenes.

Watching Miranda go from the cerulean sweater scene to her more vulnerable scene describing her divorce and then seeing the final scene where she smiles to herself after seeing Andy showcases different sides to the character.

One way or another, the cerulean sweater scene lives rent-free in my mind to this day.