About two-thirds of American women are plus-size, but here in L.A., you’d never know that by looking at the shifting retail landscape. Mass market plus-size retailers like City of Industry-based Torrid are closing dozens of stores, while big-box stores including Target and Old Navy have been stealthily reducing the amount of plus-size stock they carry on shelves, choosing instead to direct shoppers to their online portals.
The few locally owned plus-size boutiques aren’t faring much better. Recently, Marcy Guevara-Prete, owner of Atwater Village’s Perfect 10+, announced her intention to close her store on April 27. All clothes and accessories will be 60% off, and she is selling some of the store’s fixtures and mannequins.
After shuttering her decade-old, hot-pink, plus-size resale shop, the Plus Bus, in Highland Park last fall, she thought paring down her store’s stock and slightly expanding its sizing could save her business. Her rent in Highland Park was up to $6,000 a month, she says, and the move to a smaller space in Atwater Village cut her expenses in half.
But almost six months into running her new space as Perfect 10+, Guevara-Prete says it’s become increasingly clear: She was fighting a losing battle. “It feels really obvious that the store has to close, but it’s so heartbreaking,” she says.
Operating the Plus Bus and Perfect 10+ was more of a labor of love for her than a money-grab, she says, noting that she never once turned a profit on either store. A reality TV producer turned boutique owner, Guevara-Prete says she kept the stores running because she felt the plus-size community needed them.
Not only were her stores well-curated retail oases — they featured mostly used clothes, but also a few new pieces — for those who couldn’t find a plethora of styles that could fit them at, say, Westfield Century City, but they were also stores that fostered community through sponsoring events such as plus-friendly pool parties and drag shows. And they were known for donating outfits and styling to members of L.A.’s transgender community.
The stores became a first stop for Hollywood stylists pulling looks for celebrities like Nicole Byer and Megan Stalter and an essential destination for out-of-town plus-size travelers who often came from communities where a store like the Plus Bus didn’t exist. (Byer and Lizzo also frequently sold or donated their used clothes to the store to sell.)
The Plus Bus also got national attention, getting acknowledged in an episode of “Hacks” as well as featured in an episode of Avery Trufelman’s “Articles of Interest” podcast about clothing.
So what happened?
Starting in 2023, Guevara-Prete says, the store’s sales began to dip. “They took this nosedive, and it seemed inexplicable,” she says. “Some people related it to the election or to uncertainty coming out of COVID, when people had that extra $600 a week to spend on things like clothes, but either way, the last three years have just been a total slog.”
Guevara-Prete says the downturn caused her to lay off most of her eight employees, and ultimately, she found herself taking out a few ill-advised business loans with less-than-favorable interest rates. All of this was happening while she was also struggling to land full-time freelance work in the entertainment industry, which is experiencing its own struggles.
“I was essentially making irresponsible decisions in order to keep [the stores] going, whether for spite, for ego, for the community or for the dream,” she says. “I really just had to face the music and make a choice that was really, really hard, especially when every single day people tell me how much the Plus Bus has changed them and how wonderful and affirming it’s been. Like, I don’t think anyone is going to talk about any episode of ‘Top Chef’ I produced at my funeral, but they absolutely will talk about the Plus Bus.”
In some sense, they already are. Guevara-Prete says there’s been a big outpouring of love from fans and shoppers who have supported the stores over the years.
At Perfect 10+ on a recent weekday afternoon, people poured in one after one, both to shop the deeply discounted racks and to pay their respects to Guevara-Prete, whom everyone met with hugs and lamentations about their collective loss.
Everyone visiting left with something: a pair of leopard print boots, a dress for a brother’s upcoming wedding or a red tango-friendly gown. Guevara-Prete says the oversize outpouring of support has been present online as well. But she wishes some of those fans had been shopping at her stores on a monthly or quarterly basis in recent years rather than now bemoaning what’s been lost.
“There’s a lot of chatter online about who isn’t selling plus sizes and who doesn’t carry your size, but there isn’t nearly enough promotion of the places that do,” she says.
Although the occasional plus-size pop-up like Thick Thrift still happens in L.A. and a few local plus-size resale shops remain, including Qurves in Burbank, MuMu Mansion in Mid-City and Hannah’s Hefty Hideaway on the city’s Westside, Guevara-Prete says she’s increasingly worried about where her store’s plus-size customers will be able to shop going forward.
“Where are people going to go in a pinch when there’s no brick-and-mortar that’s consistently open?” she asks. “Stores [like the Plus Bus and Perfect 10+] not existing is scary to me, because I need them. It just makes me feel like the plus-size community is being devalued even further as a population.”
Customer Dina Ramona Silva happened upon the Plus Bus’ initial Glassell Park location after moving to L.A. in 2015. For her, Guevara-Prete’s stores weren’t just retail outlets, they were also a sort of intellectual salon or spiritual sanctuary.
“I’ve been a big girl my whole life, like I came out of the womb 10 pounds, eight ounces. There has never been a point when I’ve been skinny,” Silva says. Finding a place like the Plus Bus, where “even the people who worked there were big, bodacious [and] fashionable” felt nourishing, like just stopping in to chat with people in the store could give her a boost of confidence that she might not find anywhere else.
“It changed my entire conception of who I was in the community,” Silva says. “A lot of times in female friend groups, there’s one single fat girl amidst all the other slender women and allies. Having a place like the Plus Bus helped me because then, it was me and a whole bunch of other plus-size baddies. It was like, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool. We could all share clothes and they’d fit!’”
Guevara-Prete’s stores have also been important spaces for L.A.’s trans, queer and gender-fluid communities. Eureka O’Hara, a drag performer who’s appeared on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and HBO’s “We’re Here,” says she found the Plus Bus about six years ago when she started to explore her gender identity, ultimately transitioning from presenting as nonbinary to being transfemme.
“The Plus Bus was so important to the queer and gender-fluid community because it gave us a place to feel comfortable trying clothes on,” O’Hara says. “Oftentimes I would show up, and they would have clothes already pulled for me. Also, I’m coming up on a year sober, but when I last relapsed, I came back to L.A. after having a relapse in Vegas. I ended up putting all my stuff in storage and went straight into a rehabilitation clinic and then sober living, so I didn’t have any of my belongings. Marcy made sure I had clothes to wear so that I could still present myself publicly on social media as a trans woman talking about my process of recovery, and she did it at no cost.”
O’Hara says she knows other trans women whose wardrobes are almost entirely from the Plus Bus, saying that if they couldn’t afford the clothes they wanted, the store would often give them “extreme discounts, if not free clothing.”
Guevara-Prete says that while her stores’ closing has been “more bitter than sweet,” she’s still proud of the work she’s done with the Plus Bus and Perfect 10+.
“I never in a million years thought I would own a boutique or have the kind of healing that’s come from the Plus Bus community,” she says. “What I’ve experienced and learned about body positivity, body neutrality, fat liberation, fat acceptance and how that’s been translated from my clothes to my actual soul … There’s nothing like it. And I’d like to think that I’ve also healed people through this project and that people have made friendships and memories they’ll have for lifetimes at my events.”
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