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If you love fashion, you know what it’s like to count down to Fashion Week, excited to watch the trends for next year come parading down the runway and trying to envision how you’re going to interpret the style and make it your own. And then you look forward to said new trends hitting the shelves, combing through the racks and trying them on.

Until they don’t fit.

Because, let’s face it, most of this country cannot fit into the small sizes designers produce. Even more, it seems that sizes are getting smaller and smaller and what once fit you as a size ten, you can no longer even pull up over your legs!

But that may not be the case much longer. Much like fashion magazines, it looks like designers are starting to get the hint. (Let me take a moment to say MAZEL TOV! What took you so long?!) Starting this fall, Saks is going to start carrying extended sizes from designer faves like Chanel, YSL, Dolce & Gabanna, Fendi, Roberto Cavalli and Alexander McQueen. (Sizes will range from a 14 up to a size 20 depending on the line). OK, so most of us can’t afford those pricey labels, but we all know trickle down theory: what top designers do, the rest of the fashion industry does soon after. That means more fierce fashion in a range of sizes that will fit every woman, not just the size zero celebrities walking the red carpet.

And what’s more, it looks like Marc Jacobs may be joining the plus-size party in about a year! Marc’s business partner Robert Duffy Tweeted over the weekend saying:

“Your right. We gotta do larger sizes. I’m with you. As soon as I get back to NY. I’m on it! It will take me about a year. But stay with us”

Despite the fact that Robert’s grammar is a bit off (you’d think a businessman would know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’), this is most definitely something worth knowing about. And celebrating! FINALLY designers are getting the memo that the majority of us who pour over their designs season after season can’t even wear them without looking like a sausage casing. But not for long, ladies! Pretty soon girls of all sizes can rock a Chanel frock or a Marc Jacobs trench!

It’s about damn time.

Lately, every fashion magazine on the newsstands has had some variation of a plus size model photo spread. Editors claim to be celebrating the real American woman, but we know it’s just a feeble attempt to boost sales and save their dying businesses.

Being a plus sized girl myself, I’m torn on the whole trend. On the one hand, it’s great to see women with a little meat on their bones (or any meat on their bones, for that matter) displayed so beautifully across the pages of my favorite fashion mags. It’s refreshing to finally be able to look at a fashion spread and see how clothing really looks on real people. People like me.

On the other hand, though, focusing entire spreads and features on plus sized women seems a little exploitative. It’s as if the magazines are saying, “See! We like fat people, too!” And if their goal, as they state, is to change the way we view beauty and really represent the real women living and shopping in this country, they’re going about it all wrong.

In a country where the average woman is a size 14, it should not be a novelty to have plus size women modeling in high fashion magazines. It should not be some special feature added to an issue to prove that women can be sexy and beautiful over a size 4. It should be the norm. Because these women, regardless of their size, are beautiful; their weight should not matter. Pulling those women aside and using them to make some positive statement about body image only does the opposite.

If magazine editors really want to make a change, a necessary change, in the way people view beauty, it’s time to stop treating plus sized models as if they are some sort of rare item and treat them the same as they do every other model. Put them in every fashion story. Shoot them for every fashion spread. Put them in haute couture next to the size zero models and just let them be.

Don’t draw attention to their size. Don’t shoot them naked to show off their beauty. Stop using them to make some grand statement that “they’re beautiful too,” and start treating them with the same respect and awe that you give every other model.

The majority of women reading these magazines are closer to a size 14 than they are to a size zero so stop acting like we are somehow beneath you and the skinny girls and treat us as we deserve to be treated: as normal, beautiful, fabulous women.

[The ladies over at Lemondrop are also seeing a majorly mixed message in this new trend: “Doesn't it strike you as slightly insulting that the average American woman is being represented by "plus-size models," while real-life plus-size women aren't being represented at all?” Check out their take on things.]

So, apparently that’s Beyonce.

I know, right? I didn’t recognize her either. Her face looks completely different, her right boob is computer generated, and check out that waist! Did she have some ribs removed? That’s gotta be airbrushing, right?

RIGHT?!

I mean, no one’s body can look like that naturally. And I hope this cover doesn’t inspire women to try.

I. Love. Plaid.

I don’t know what it is about that winsome pattern, but I can’t get enough.

I suspect it has something to do with the years I spent looking at fashion magazines with my mother. Every September, from the time I was 11 until I was 17, my mom would come home with a copy of the Seventeen: Back To School issue. And we devoured that sh*t.

And for some reason, every September without fail, that magazine would be busting at the seams with plaid. Plaid dresses, plaid shirts, plaid fricking socks–is plaid in every fall? The answer, my friends, is yes.

I don’t read Seventeen’s Back to School issue anymore (although my mother still does), but plaid don’t fade and neither do my love.

So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the creme of the crop of this season’s fall plaids. Pair with otherwise simple pieces, a smile, and a nostalgia that time will never defeat. Ahhhh. Plaid.

See? Plaid can be totally sexy.

The blue-and-black thing is totally in right now (after years of a ridiculous taboo) and the cut is so flattering. Plus the play on 90s grunge is just plain fun. Mmmm delicious little jacket.

An adorable tee-shirt play on plaid. Love it. Nice and casual and still on trend.

A nice subtle plaid in a wide-leg pant is perfect for work, internship, interview, or wherever else you need to look sophisticated and chic. Plus, gray is SO in this year. Pair these with pumps and a black top and you’re set for fall.

It’s kind of like Barbie requested a high-heeled plaid sneaker and they made it and it was PERFECTION. This cute little plaid shoe is comfortable and cheap. And fricking sweet. What else could you ask in a shoe?

…Unless, of course, you’re looking for a hotass plaid pump.

Oh my god, this shoe is so sexy I might have to change teams (to shoe) for it. DROOL. Hotttt.

Hot umbrella for cool autumn showers. Fuchia and black plaid are unflappable. I mean, look, you need an umbrella. Why not get a cute one?

This drapey dress can go cocktail party or it can go third date. Either way, it’s soft, comfortable, and simultaneously trendy and classic. This is the kind of dress you can wear for years for multiple special occasions. So freaking cute.

Plaid, anyone?

Or how magazines will spend an entire season convincing you to get rid of your wide-legs because “Skinny is here to stay!” and then four months later, all you see in the same magazine are super-duper-I could fit 5 kegs in here-wide legs that are a “Must Have” for the upcoming season… “Wide legs are here to stay!” Riiiight.

And I even love what is perhaps, the most ridiculous concept about fashion: nothing is really ever all that original. Sure Marc Jacobs (whom I adore and would date if he wasn’t on another team) makes Flannel look effortlessly chic- but at the same time, my brothers wore plaid flannels in high school along with Doc Martens and their Walkman clipped inside their Z. Cavaricci’s (ah the 90′s….).

I’m usually all for fashion comebacks. Since I’m a vintage junkie, I will jump at the chance to wear something that was once the IT style. Partly because I’m a sappy nostalgic- I love the idea of wearing bell bottoms and imagining what my life would have been like had I grown up in the 70′s. I like to give fashion the benefit of the doubt. I enjoy playing dressup. I do believe that a flannel top could be cute. And aside from the recent seasons of awful Maternity wear, I usually look forward to the “New” (recycled) trends coming out each season- wondering what era will be in this year.

That is until I saw these. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry. Or vomit. Or both.

Not only are they high-tops. But they look like my two year old nephew finger painted all over them in the most heinous combination of colors (having a flashback to my 10th grade cheerleading uniform: brown and yellow. Poop and pee. Okay- that might have been worse). What’s next? Scrunchie socks and puff painted sweatshirts? Slap bracelets and stirrup pants with body suits tucked in?

What makes me even more nervous is that my eye will get used to these horrible-terrible-awful shoes that I will (gasp!) eventually want to wear them! And this got me thinking back to all of the trends I felt the same way about… and ultimately ended up wearing:

Uggs

Moccasins

Chinese Slippers

Designer Fanny Packs

Leggings

Butterfly clips

Bra straps as headbands

Maternity style dresses

Super low rise jeans with the band at the top cut off so they frayed

Platform gym shoes

Animal print pants (I distinctly remember feeling SO cool meeting Christina Aguilera in tiger printed pants. Oh. Lord.)

Skinny Jeans

High-Waisted pants with a shirt tucked in (I mean did we not spend the last 10 years trying to get rid of the “Mom-Butt?”)

So lets hear it ladies, I know we are all guilty of this. What trends did you swear you would NEVER be caught dead in… only to be wearing them 2 months later? Would you rock the Reebok’s?

I’ll keep you posted if I end up wearing these bad boys. But I’m thinking if I do, I’ll just buy them in White and actually have my nephew paint them himself.

Then at least they will be unique.