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Australian fashion retailer Kookai has been slammed online by angry shoppers who claim the store is ‘fat-shaming’.
The brand is famous for exclusively stocking smaller sizes with their social media and advertising campaigns strikingly absent of plus-sized models.
A growing number of women are coming forward to share their horror stories from just venturing through the store’s shiny glass shopfronts to browse, saying they are being subjected to ‘side-eye’ stares and discrimination.
Aussie fashion retailer Kookai (pictured) has faced backlash online for its stores ‘fat-shaming’ customers with some even being recommended other stores ‘stock larger sizes for larger girls’
‘Why are Kookai workers so stuck up? I’m a size medium, and the looks I get as soon as I walk in make me uncomfortable,’ one Melbourne woman wrote in a Facebook group post.
‘Has anyone else dealt with this before?’ she added.
The post prompted a raft of similar stories from other women who say they’ve had similar experiences.
‘This has been happening for years. They are well-known for it, and they do tend to fat-shame their customers,’ one woman said.
Another shared that she had ‘never been more humiliated in my life’ when she entered one of the retailer’s stores.
‘As someone that has struggled with body image, I can tell you I’ll never go back there,’ she added.
Others noted the store’s confusing sizing system where they stock sizes 6 through 14 which translates to sizes 0-2 for their own ‘basics’ range.
In one of multiple TikTok videos that takes aim at the store, Adelle Petropoulos said she visited a store a few months ago and was shocked by the way she was treated.
The makeup artist said she is typically a size 8 in tops and 12 in bottoms but when she asked a staff member for the larger size in a dress she was looking at ‘she looked me up and down and literally said, ‘Doll, we don’t stock any larger sizes”.
‘Now in hindsight, I should have roasted her right then and there, but I wasn’t about to tear into the retail assistant because of her poor attitude, so I asked for her manager,’ she said.
The manager then recommended her some stores that ‘stock larger sizes for larger girls’.
One person commented on Ms Petropoulos’ video that it was an: ‘Absolute joke that they classify a 12 as a large size’.
Kookai was founded in France but expanded into Australia in the early 1990s with a store on Melbourne’s Collins St before rolling out countrywide.
The brand is famous for exclusively stocking smaller sizes with their social media and advertising campaigns strikingly absent of plus-sized models
The brand was sold in 2017 to the Australian company Magi but the stores still operate in both countries, each with its own design teams that curate the stores’ collections.
The French stores are known for their knitwear while the Oceania stores focus on a more glamorous style that dovetails into its politically incorrect niche.
Charlene Stojanovski, 32, said she recently visited one of the brand’s Sydney stores but would never go back.
‘I browsed through their clothing, and there was nothing on the rack past a size 8,’ Ms Stojanovski said.
‘I sheepishly asked if they had larger sizes and one of the staff said, ‘Oh honey, I’m sorry, we only cater for the petite’.
‘She answered my question like it was the dumbest thing I could ask them, almost condescendingly.’
Kookai has been contacted by Daily Mail Australia for comment.
