In The Media

“I can’t wait for a future that focuses on lifting us up instead of tearing us down: ‘10 Bird Songs To Listen for on Your Next Hike’ sounds a whole lot better than ‘10 Ways To Lose 10 Pounds,’ don’t you think? I want to live in a world where I’m celebrated, and I know I’m not alone.” —Raquel Vélez

Vélez has big dreams for Alpine Parrot....“I want to be as big as Patagonia for plus-size,” [Vélez] says of her business’s future. “I want to be able to cover every single activity that people of size do. Which, it turns out, is all of them.”

Clothing companies typically approach plus-size offerings as simply scaled-up versions of smaller sizes, an approach that fails to recognize that a person’s proportions may not simply be a larger version of a size six. The Ponderosa Pants not only come in sizes 14 to 24, but...

The soft, stretchy, nylon-elastane fabric moved with our bodies without tearing at the seams as we high-stepped up boulders on the rugged North Carolina section of the Appalachian Trail. It was even stretchy enough for us to sit cross-legged by a campfire without...