Khloe Kardashian: Being Shamed for My Curves Inspired My New Denim Line - Fortune

Don’t try calling Khloe Kardashian plus-sized.

“F–k that. I don’t want to be called that—I’m a woman with curves,” said the reality TV star, speaking at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women Next Gen conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif. on Tuesday.

Kardashian is the co-founder of Good American, a denim line offering sizes ranging from 00 to 24. She says that the brand, which launched in October this year, was partially inspired by her experiences shopping with Kim Kardashian and her other famous sisters.

Before losing weight, Kardashian, whose transformation is the subject of an E! show titled Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian, said she was “embarrassed to go shopping with my sisters, who are petite”—mostly because clerks in many high-end boutiques were condescending about her size.

Subscribe to the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the world’s most powerful women.

She wants Good American to cater to women of all body shapes and sizes. “I remember the chubby girl in me and I’m fighting for my chubby self,” she says.

“Like a lot of good business ideas, you have to start with a problem,” added Kardashian’s business partner, Emma Grede. The way department stores treat plus-size women is one such problem: “The sizes stop at a 12, but the average woman is a 16.”

Kardashian’s passion about the issue is one key reason she decided to partner with Grede, she said, acknowledging that she—and other members of her famous family—have made business mistakes in the past.

“At first, you take on a lot of things that aren’t really authentic and true to you—because you’re young and excited,” said Kardashian.

Over the years, she says she’s learned that in order to make a business work, “you have to do something that [is] really authentic to you—something that you want to breathe, to live, to dream about.”

The pair were also insistent that the denim would be made in the U.S., by workers paid what they describe as “a fair wage.” Indeed, the brand’s name—Good American—is a nod to those values.

“We wanted to the company to behave like a good American,” said Grede. “To treat our workers how we would want to be treated.”

Though the brand is just a few months old, the partners already have their eyes on an expansion. Kardashian said that Good American may eventually add a men’s or children’s line, though for now: “I’m just excited to see where it goes.”

http://ift.tt/2fB2Dc4