Torrid

Torrid is an American plus-size fashion retailer for women in sizes 10 to 30, based in City of Industry, California. It opened its first store at Brea Mall on April 18, 2001, as a division of the mall chain Hot Topic, and its intimates line, Torrid Curve, is one of the larger plus-size bra businesses in the United States.

A Hot Topic Experiment at Brea Mall

Torrid was Hot Topic's answer to its own customer mail. Under chief executive Betsy McLaughlin, the band-tee chain kept hearing from young shoppers who could not fit into what it sold. Rather than extend Hot Topic's size run, the company built a second chain aimed at young plus-size women and opened the first door in Brea, Orange County, in spring 2001.

The bet was on fashion, not basics. At the time, much of the plus-size market was dressed by department-store "women's" floors and by Lane Bryant, which had been doing it since the early twentieth century. Torrid went after a younger, trend-led customer with the same mall-store format Hot Topic had used on teenagers.

Sycamore, Separation and the CURV Ticker

In 2013 Hot Topic agreed to sell itself to the private equity firm Sycamore Partners for about $600 million. Two years later the plus-size chain was split off as Torrid, LLC, with Sycamore keeping control of both businesses.

The public listing came in the summer of 2021. Selling shareholders priced 11 million shares at $21.00 on June 30, and the stock opened on the New York Stock Exchange on July 1 under the ticker CURV. No new money went to the company; existing holders sold, and Sycamore affiliates kept a majority of the votes. At the time of the offering Torrid ran 608 stores.

The prospectus sketched the customer in unusual detail. Torrid said it designs for a curvy woman aged 25 to 40, that 58 percent of its 2020 customers were under 40, and that the average customer wore a size 18. It sized the addressable market at about 90 million American women wearing a 10 or above.

Torrid Curve and the Plus-Size Bra

For a lingerie museum, Curve is the interesting part. Torrid Curve covers bras, panties, activewear, loungewear and sleepwear, and the company has treated it as a loyalty engine rather than a sideline. In its 2021 filing, Torrid reported that customers who bought Curve products in 2019 and 2020 spent three times as much as those who did not, and were retained at 1.5 times the rate.

The product claims in the same document are specific. Torrid pointed to a patent-pending back-smoothing construction and to a newly introduced wireless bra, both pitched at problems that are worse in larger sizes: band roll, side spillage and wires that dig. Plus-size bras are a different engineering job from straight-size ones, with wider gores, stronger bands and more support carried by the straps, and a retailer that cuts its own blocks has an advantage over one that grades up a smaller pattern.

The 2018 lingerie push

In 2018 Torrid launched a lingerie collection with the plus-size model Tara Lynn, moving the Curve name beyond everyday bras into lace and fashion sets. It was a direct bid for the gift-and-occasion purchase that had long belonged to straight-size chains.

The Store Retreat of 2025

The chain grew past 650 stores across the United States and Canada by 2024. Then the arithmetic changed. By the first quarter of 2025, more than 60 percent of sales came through digital channels, and in mid-2025 chief executive Lisa Harper announced that Torrid would close about 180 stores that year, close to 30 percent of the fleet, up from an earlier plan of 40 to 50. Management said it expected stores to account for only about a quarter of sales in future, and the company has since operated a much smaller fleet.

What Torrid Changed

Torrid did not invent plus-size fashion, and its claim to the category is commercial rather than artistic. What it proved, at mall scale and later on a stock exchange, is that a customer in a size 18 will buy trend clothing and fashion bras at full price when someone makes them in her size and sells them from a proper shop. The fact that its own customers now prefer to buy online says more about American malls than about the bras.

Last updated October 7, 2026