Curvy Cactus is a movement for inclusion, creativity, and joy in plus size fashion. Founded by sisters Amber and Alyss Seelig, this Seattle-based shop celebrates plus-size bodies through resale, upcycled designs, and a welcoming community space inside the Seattle Fat Mall. Amber and Alyss created Curvy Cactus and the Fat Mall to create a space for people in large bodies to have the traditional, fun, boutique shopping experience that they’ve been excluded from for most of their lives.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tell us about Curvy Cactus!
Curvy Cactus is a resale and retail shop. We focus on clothing size large and up. We are here to serve the plus size community. And we also like to upcycle and rework things called “Curvy Cactus Originals.” We are located in Downtown Seattle, inside of the Seattle Fat Mall.
What is the Seattle Fat Mall?
Fat Mall is a community space as well as a shopping destination. On any given Fat Mall day, we have five to ten shops open for your art, clothes, and shopping experience for people in larger bodies. The Seattle Fat Mall is an entire mall geared towards plus-size shoppers. We feature local artists and clothing designers, and we have art, jewelry, as well as clothes. Sometimes we have pop-up tattoo artists. We also have a lounge where we have events.
How did you get into Fashion, how did you get into upcycling? What’s the journey been like?
Well, we started Curvy Cactus in the fall of 2021. We had this extremely positive experience of going to a different plus-size shopping event where we felt really seen and validated and centered. We wanted to bring that up to our community in Seattle.
Alyss has been a sewist for many years, and so she started doing some of our upcycling and reworking. We started out doing pop-ups a lot of outdoor markets and we are pretty regular at the Fremont Sunday market and tons of other local neighborhood markets. We’re just tried to grow and grow we have this spot through Seattle Restored, which is a program put on by the City of Seattle to put small businesses into the vacant storefronts downtown. We’ve been really lucky to be in this space actually for a year as Curvy Cactus. In April we reopened as the Fat Mall with us being just one of the shops here.
What should a first-time customer expect when they walk in?
When somebody walks in for the first time, they can expect to find a large selection of clothes, everything size large and up in the shop, where they can find lots of options from local artists and designers, as well as great deals on some resale clothes.
We have bright colors, we have music playing, the lights are on, people are making fat friends and building the community. People can come in and expect to have a great time.
Can you talk about what this means for the fat community? I have never seen a “Fat Mall” before, and I would have loved to have had more positive shopping experiences.
Yeah, in Seattle, we have Two Big Blondes, a plus size consignment store, which has been here holding it down for like 25 years. And we’re just so excited that we’re able to add on to that community that started with Two Big Blondes. There aren’t a lot of shopping opportunities for plus-size people, especially in-person shopping.
We’re part of the fat community ourselves and because of that, we are usually forced to shop online. Basically, that’s like the direction our shopping has gone: If you want to get plus-size clothes, you have to shop online.
It’s not as fun. It’s really wasteful. You have to order things in multiple sizes because you’re not sure what will fit. And so having a space that is specifically designed for people in large bodies, fat people, allows them to come in, have racks upon racks of clothes in their size for them to try them on, and pick the one or two things that they really want. They won’t feel like they have to buy the single item that fits them in the whole store, or that they need need to buy a bunch of accessories only. Curvy Cactus and the Fat Mall creates space for people in large bodies to have this sort of traditional, fun, kind of boutique-y shopping experience that we’ve been totally excluded from for most of our lives.
Intentionalist is all about encouraging people to shop local and in their local communities rather than ordering online. Actually go, meet the owners, experience the experience that they want you to have. If this is important to you, could you say a little bit about why?
For small businesses, every dollar that you spend matters to us. Giving your money to businesses, local businesses, helps build the community and strengthen the people in it.
Anything else you’d like people to know about Curvy Cactus specifically?
So for Curvy Cactus specifically, our mission from day one has been to try and make the world a better place for fat people. Having this brick and mortar shop is one piece of that. And we’re so happy that we get to offer this. We don’t even know what the future will hold, but we think it’ll be more and more.
So come on down, check us out. All bodies are welcome. We have a lot to show you. Come on down and see for yourself what the positive plus-size shopping experience can be.
We have designers from Seattle, from Portland, from Minneapolis, from New Orleans. We have a lot of unique stuff that you will not find anywhere else, plus our one-of-a-kind upcycled pieces. Come and hang with us!