Meet The Three Women Who Helped Shape Target's New Plus-Size Line

In case you live under some kind of Twitter-free rock, Target is launching a fashionable and affordable plus-size collection on Feb 22 much to the excitement of, well, pretty much everyone.

After what seems like mishap after mishap when it came to the store's relationship with its plus-size customers, it looks like the company is finally getting it right. Ava & Viv will be the first in-house style-driven collection the chain will carry not only online but in stores as well. The news has been met with much praise and approval, but it's admittedly difficult not to feel like this should have been a no-brainer for Target all along.

Of course, it's easy to assume that all of this stemmed from fashion blogger Chastity Garner's post heard 'round the web, declaring her "break up" with Target due to the lack of plus-size options as part of its designer collaborations.

But as Target spokesman Joshua Thomas told HuffPost Style, Garner simply made the decision to work with her even easier by writing that letter. "When we were thinking about how to up our ante when it comes to fashion in the plus-size market, one of the things we looked at was who plus-size women look to for information and inspiration. That brought us to certain bloggers, Chastity included. The day she initiated her boycott I picked up the phone and asked if we could simply talk about it. 'How about you don't break up with us, but instead you just kick us to the couch for a bit. I think you might end up wanting us back,'" he said he told her.

It's in the spirit of this freshness and honesty that Garner, along with fellow spokespeople Nicolette Mason and Gabi Gregg not only represent the brand and star in its look book but also talk about working together on it. Stacia Andersen, senior vice president of apparel and accessories at Target, who calls the launch a "huge opportunity" for the brand within the plus-size market, explained to HuffPost Style:

The bloggers have been unbelievably helpful to us. I like to say that nothing ever gets better if we think everything is perfect. We really wanted to bring them in because they have such strong opinions -- not only for their personal style but for their huge groups of followers. Reaching out to them was the best way to really get the voice of this customer, as opposed to asking thousands of people.

But what has their feedback sounded like? According to the bloggers, they didn't hold anything back, good or bad. "In terms of the clothing, we definitely have some likes and dislikes," Gregg said, adding, "we are open with Target about our feedback. The great part about the team there is that they want to hear it and genuinely want to use it."

We can all agree that this is great news for not only Target but for the fashion industry, too. Now more than ever, truly fashionable plus-size options are improving the shopping experience for women. And while the collection may not be for everyone, Mason explains why that's actually a good thing. "It's not so generic, and it's not going to please everyone. It's definitely for a specific girl, which is exactly what great design should be. It shouldn't be something that appeals to every person regardless of their personal taste or style. This is a true collection," she said.

Best of all, working with these bloggers humanizes Target in a way we haven't seen done by many other retailers, especially when it comes to the plus-size market. "People are going to talk to us in a different way they would a corporation or brand. They trust us. We're their peers, we shop the same way they do. It really personalizes the experience," Mason explained.

No matter how you feel about the collection, there's one thing all three bloggers (and we) can agree on, "it's all happening."

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Bottom In Sight For U.S. Gas Prices: Survey

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States fell 13.3 cents in the past two weeks, falling to its lowest level since late April 2009, but the end of a months-long slide may be near, according to the Lundberg survey released Sunday.

Prices for regular grade gasoline fell to $2.07 a gallon in the survey dated Jan. 23 from the previous survey on Jan. 9.

The recent drop has taken prices down more than $1.24 a gallon from the same period a year ago, a decline driven by losses in the crude oil market from its June peak.

However, survey publisher Trilby Lundberg noted that the drop in pump prices was less steep than it had been in previous periods and that the price many wholesale customers paid for gasoline rose in the past 10 days, suggesting a bottoming-out or increase in retail gasoline prices could be looming.

"The street price crash is either coming to an end or is already at its bottom," Lundberg said, noting that it would take another substantial slide in the price of oil to reverse the gains in wholesale prices.

Both U.S. and Brent crude futures continued their decline in the past week, after finishing the week ended Jan. 16 up slightly. These shallower price losses were part of the reason why the gasoline price drop was less steep this week and contributed to the gains in wholesale prices.

On Friday, Brent crude closed up at $48.79 a barrel, while U.S. crude settled down 72 cents at $45.59.

The highest price within the survey area in the 48 contiguous U.S. states was recorded in San Francisco at $2.54 per gallon, with the lowest in Albuquerque, New Mexico at $1.73. (Editing by Eric Walsh)

Mattel CEO Resigns Amid Barbie Struggles

Mattel Chairman and CEO Bryan Stockton has resigned after the struggling maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars reported fourth-quarter results that fell far short of analyst expectations.

Shares of the El Segundo, California, company slipped in Monday morning trading.

The company said longtime board member Christopher A. Sinclair will replace Stockton as chairman and interim CEO.

The toy maker also disclosed that its net income tumbled 59 percent to $149.9 million from $369.2 million in the three months that ended Dec. 31. On a per-share basis, Mattel earned 44 cents per share in the most recent quarter, or 52 cents per share not counting hits from integration costs and taxes.

Revenue fell 6 percent to $1.99 billion.

Analysts forecast, on average, earnings of 91 cents per share on $2.14 billion in revenue, according to the data firm FactSet.

Mattel has struggled for several quarters now with slumping sales of its iconic Barbie dolls.

Making matters worse, late last year, Barbie lost its top spot on the crucial holiday wish lists of girls to merchandise from the Disney hit "Frozen." The National Retail Federation's Holiday Top Toys Survey found that one in five parents, or 20 percent, planned to buy "Frozen" merchandise for their girls. That beat the 16.8 percent that are looking to make a Barbie purchase.

Stockton became CEO in January 2012 and then was named chairman a year later. Sinclair said in a statement from the company that the Mattel board believed it was the right time for a change in leadership to maximize the company's potential.

Mattel will announce full results from its quarter on Friday.

The company's stock fell 45 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $27.60 in Monday morning trading after falling as low as $24.88 earlier in the session, while broader indexes slipped less 1 percent. Mattel shares are coming off a year in which their price sank 35 percent, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index climbed 11.4 percent.

McDonald's May Cut More Menu Items

The McDonald’s menu could be getting even smaller.

Mike Andres, McDonald’s U.S. CEO, hinted on a conference call with analysts Friday that the chain may cut more menu items.

“This menu rationalization process is clearly ongoing,” Andres said. “As we look forward, we’ve added quite a number of products over the last 18 months or so, so we’re rationalizing that.”

Andres was responding to a question from an analyst about whether the chain would be willing to keep cutting the menu if the recent decision to slash eight items proved successful. As part of the test, McDonald's went from four quarter pounders with cheese to one, three premium chicken sandwiches to one and three snack wraps to one.

CNBC reported Friday that according to more than one franchisee, the Bacon Habanero Ranch Quarter Pounder, Bacon and Cheese Quarter Pounder, Premium Chicken Club Sandwich and Premium Ranch BLT Chicken Sandwich will be nixed.

So far, the company's menu changes have led to improved sales and better throughput -- a measure of how many orders are processed in a given period of time -- in test markets, Andres said on the call.

McDonald’s could use the help. The chain’s profits plunged 21 percent from the same quarter a year ago, according to the fourth-quarter earnings report released Friday. The past few months also marked the fifth quarter in a row that McDonald’s reported a drop in sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, an important metric of a restaurant's health.

Analysts, the media, franchisees and even McDonald’s executives have blamed the chain’s bloated menu for its poor performance in recent months. The menu -- which had just nine items in the 1950s -- ballooned to more than 100 items over the past several years, ranging from things like Egg McMuffins to a few McWrap varieties to smoothies.

The complicated menu has made it harder for McDonald’s to deliver what it’s known for: cheap and quick food. It also comes at a time when Americans are turning increasingly to chains like Chipotle and Five Guys, which have a handful of menu items but offer diners the ability to customize their orders.

McDonald’s is rolling out its own customizable options for burgers, called Create Your Taste, at 2,000 locations nationwide. Diners can pick from fancy toppings like creamy garlic sauce, guacamole and pepper jack cheese. Andres hinted on the call that the program could make it easier for the fast food giant to cut even more from its menu.

“That offers unlimited variety to our guests, they can now choose whatever they want, so it takes some of the pressure off a lot of the other menu items,” he said.

This Guy Just Made $1 Billion Betting On Oil Prices

You know what's cool? An oil-price collapse that saves you a few dollars when you fill up the Escalade. You know what's cooler? An oil-price collapse that makes you ONE BILLION FREAKING DOLLARS.

A hedge fund called PointState Capital is currently enjoying that second state of cool, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The New York firm has made a $1 billion profit from betting that crude oil would crater, according to the report.

In hindsight, it does seem like a pretty no-duh bet to make. Way back in May 2014, Bloomberg notes, PointState CEO Zach Schreiber publicly laid out a simple case for crude's impending collapse. Schreiber correctly noted that oil and gas producers in the U.S. were pumping too much oil out of the ground and setting up a huge price decline -- in other words, rapidly strangling the goose that was, at the time, laying golden oil-filled eggs.

Since Schreiber's presentation, crude has fallen from roughly $100 a barrel in May to less than $50 a barrel this week. Bada bing, bada boom, make a billion dollars. So easy.

PointState started out with a relatively meager $5 billion in 2011, founded by alumni of a much bigger hedge fund run by a more famous hedge fund manager, Stanley Druckenmiller. Now its leader, Schreiber, who used to quietly trade oil and other commodities for Druckenmiller, is suddenly at real risk of becoming a rock-star hedge fund genius whose every move is followed obsessively.

But everybody's a genius in hindsight. Foresight is a lot harder. Untold scores of hedge funds took the opposite bet of PointState and got themselves slaughtered.

A PointState representative did not immediately respond to The Huffington Post's request for confirmation or comment.

The hedge funds who made the wrong call aren't the only ones suffering: The U.S. oil and gas producers Schreiber mentioned are starting to make layoffs and production cuts.

It's worth noting that Schreiber got an unexpected assist from OPEC, which decided in November to stand back and watch oil prices go straight to hell, hoping to squeeze out some U.S. producers. Almost nobody expected that to happen -- it's possible that even Schreiber didn't see it coming. He didn't mention it in his May presentation, Bloomberg points out.

This is not the first big hedge fund win that seems obvious in hindsight. Most famously, John Paulson, founder of Paulson and Co., made between $3 billion and $4 billion in a single year betting on the subprime mortgage collapse that everybody should have seen coming.

These guys make it look so easy that they inspire others to invest their money in hedge funds, or even to start their own. The trouble is that most hedge funds are big failures, unable even to keep up with the broader stock market.

It's not as easy as the geniuses make it look -- even for the geniuses. Paulson's ride since the financial crisis hasn't been bump-free; he took massive losses in 2011 and 2014 on big bets gone wrong. The list of huge hedge fund disasters is at least as long as the list of huge hedge fund wins.

For Schreiber, now comes the hard part. Though that $1 billion should ease the way a bit.

Workers Sue McDonald's For Discrimination, Opening New Front In Franchise Fight

A group of former McDonald's workers from Virginia are suing their stores for racial discrimination and sexual harassment -- and they're taking the rare step of naming the world's foremost fast-food company as a defendant in the suit.

The 10 plaintiffs -- nine of whom are African-American, and one of whom is Hispanic -- say they were wrongfully fired last year and replaced with mostly white workers because their managers believed there had been "too many black people [working] in the store." The lawsuit (viewable here) alleges that women were harassed and groped and that minorities were subjected to racist taunts. It also claims that managers referred to one restaurant as "the ghetto store."

Although it's usually just franchisees that are sued under discrimination claims, in this case the plaintiffs are arguing that McDonald's itself should be held responsible for the actions inside a franchised store. They say the fast-food giant should have to pay damages because it sets companywide policies and has the power to enforce them.

"In order to maximize its profit, McDonald's Corporate has control over nearly every aspect of its restaurants' operations," the lawsuit asserts. "Though nominally independent, franchised McDonald's restaurants are predominantly controlled by McDonald's."

The plaintiffs in the suit have received legal assistance from the NAACP and the group Fight for $15, which advocates on behalf of fast-food workers. According to the suit, the plaintiffs had a combined 50 years working at McDonald's restaurants, 25 of them accrued by a 53-year-old shift manager who lost her job in July. The rest of the workers lost their jobs in a mass termination in May.

As the South Boston (Virginia) News & Record reported at the time, a total of 17 workers were abruptly fired from three McDonald's restaurants in the area. All three locations were run by Michael Simon, owner of Soweva, the company that franchised the stores. At the time, workers told the paper they were informed they "didn't fit the profile" that the company was looking for in its restaurants.

"Most, though not all, of the terminated employees are African-American," the paper noted. "Most of the workers who remain on the job at the local McDonald’s also are black. So, too, is [Soweva owner] Simon."

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say that their white supervisors wanted to drop black workers from the payrolls because the stores were "too dark," in a phrase attributed to one manager.

"I had no idea what they meant by the right profile until I saw everyone else that they fired as well," Willie Betts, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement Thursday. "They took away the only source of income I have to support my family."

Simon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement at the time of the firings, Simon denied that race was a factor, saying his company "has a strict policy of prohibiting any form of discrimination or harassment in hiring, termination or any other aspect of employment."

In the lawsuit, the workers allege that when they brought their concerns to McDonald's corporate, the company "took no actions to remedy" the firings. The workers are now seeking damages from the chain under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or sex.

"We asked McDonald’s corporate to help us get our jobs back, but the company told us to take our concerns to the franchisee -- the same franchisee that just fired us," Pamela Marable, another plaintiff, said in a statement this week.

“We have not seen the lawsuit, and cannot comment on its allegations, but will review the matter carefully," McDonald's said in a statement Thursday.

"McDonald’s has a long-standing history of embracing the diversity of employees, independent Franchisees, customers and suppliers, and discrimination is completely inconsistent with our values," the company's statement continued. "McDonald’s and our independent owner-operators share a commitment to the well-being and fair treatment of all people who work in McDonald’s restaurants.”

The lawsuit in Virginia is just the latest salvo in a broader fight against the franchise model. McDonald's franchises roughly 90 percent of its stores, leaving the day-to-day operations to individual franchisees like Soweva. Since the franchisees run the stores, they're the ones that tend to get sued when labor law is broken. That's a major upside of the franchise model for companies like McDonald's.

But unions and worker groups have been arguing in court and before agencies like the National Labor Relations Board that big chains such as McDonald's should be held accountable for the working conditions inside the stores that bear their names.

Until now, that generally hasn't been the case. But that could be changing on some fronts. The NLRB's general counsel, for instance, has named McDonald's as a "joint employer" alongside several of its franchisees accused of violating labor law during the fast-food strikes. If the agency were to view the workers as employed under one big umbrella -- rather than by hundreds or thousands of individual franchisees -- it would be much easier for the workers to unionize en masse. As it is, the fact that McDonald's workers are technically employed by different franchisees means they would have to be unionized store by individual store.

Several lawsuits currently seek to hold McDonald's responsible for wage theft allegedly committed by its franchisees. As with the discrimination complaint in Virginia, the plaintiffs in those suits argue that McDonald's ultimately exerts control over the operations inside individual stores, and that it should be held accountable when the law is broken.

Obamacare Is Close To Achieving Goal Of 9.1 Million Signups

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving closer to its goal of 9.1 million people signed up for private coverage under the president's health care law.

The Health and Human Services Department says at least 400,000 people signed up last week. That brought total enrollment in the 37 states served by HealthCare.gov to more than 7.1 million.

National figures should be significantly higher because the federal count doesn't include major states such as California and New York that are running their own markets.

Florida leads the federal marketplace states, with more than 1.2 million people enrolled. Texas has nearly 920,000.

The administration is expecting a surge near the Feb. 15 sign-up deadline.

The law offers subsidized private coverage to people who don't have health insurance on the job.

Netflix Stock Is Soaring

Shares of Netflix surged more than 13 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday, after the company reported subscriber growth that topped its own forecasts.

The world’s biggest subscription streaming service added 4.33 million new members in the three months that ended in December. Netflix had forecast it would add 4 million members in the quarter.

Netflix’s quarter, which the company said set a record for subscriber growth, comes after a volatile few months for the company’s stock. Shares of Netflix fell 19 percent on one day in October after the company reported slower-than-expected subscriber growth.

Netflix added 1.9 million members in the U.S. and 2.43 million members outside of the U.S., bringing total membership to 57.4 million. The service has been expanding aggressively overseas in recent years, and is now available in nearly 50 countries. It’s expected to launch in Australia and New Zealand later this quarter.

Andrew Cuomo Will Propose Raising New York Minimum Wage

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced Sunday that he plans to submit a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour in New York City and $10.50 an hour in the rest of the state.

The proposal is something of a reversal for Cuomo, who less than a year ago was opposed to allowing municipalities across the state to set different minimum wages. Having several different minimum wages throughout the state, Cuomo said last February, would create chaos by forcing communities to compete against one another. The current minimum wage in New York state is $8.75 per hour, a figure that's set to rise to $9 at the end of this year.

Cuomo's position reportedly began to shift this summer when he was courting the support of the progressive Working Families Party and backed a proposal to let different municipalities set different minimum wages. Under that proposal, New York City would have been able to set a minimum wage as high as $13.13 an hour.

While labor groups are praising Cuomo's decision to raise the wage, Bill Lipton, the state director of the Working Families Party, expressed disappointment that Cuomo, who was re-elected to a second four-year term in November, did not go further.

“We applaud Governor Cuomo’s proposed increase in the state minimum wage as an important first step in the right direction,” Lipton said in a statement Sunday. “But $11.50 is almost $2 less than what he endorsed last spring. And the truth is it’s nearly impossible to raise a family in this state on even $12 or $13 an hour.”

Cuomo will unveil his minimum wage plan in his proposal for the state budget on Wednesday, The New York Observer reported. It is likely to meet resistance in the GOP-controlled state Senate.

Obama To Propose Tax Hikes On Wealthy, Breaks For Middle Class

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama will lay out a plan to extend tax credits to the middle class by hiking taxes on wealthier Americans and big banks, according to senior administration officials.

Under the plan, the capital gains tax for couples with income over $500,000 per year would be raised from its current level of 23.8 percent up to 28. The plan would also strip a tax break, known as a "step-up," that allows heirs to avoid capital gains taxes on large inheritances.

In addition, the plan would institute a new tax on the biggest financial institutions, basing the fee on liabilities in order to discourage risky borrowing. The administration says the fee would hit the roughly 100 banks that have assets of $50 billion or more.

The president's plan would use revenues from those tax code changes to finance credits aimed at the middle class, officials said. That includes extending the earned income tax credits to families without children, which would benefit an estimated 13 million low-income workers, while also tripling the maximum tax credits for child care in low- and middle-income homes.

"This proposal is probably the most impactful way we can address the manifest unfairness in our tax system," an administration official said.

The tax hikes on capital gains would run into heavy opposition from Republicans in the GOP-controlled Congress. Other elements of the president's plan, however, have enjoyed some degree of bipartisan support. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) has proposed a similar tax on big banks, and many Republicans favor the idea of broadening the earned income tax credit.

According to officials, the capital gains tax reforms would impact "almost exclusively" the top 1 percent of earners, carving out the majority of middle-income families from the hikes.

In addition to the tax credits, the president's proposals will also include a plan to give more workers access to retirement accounts. Employers with at least 10 workers who don't currently offer their employees a 401(k) would have to enroll them in what's known as an automatic IRA, a plan that Obama has included in previous budgets he's proposed.

Bucking tradition, the White House has been laying out such proposals in advance of the president's speech, rather than surprising viewers with the policy measures on Tuesday. The president has already laid out a proposal to make some community college free and to extend paid leave to more people, including federal workers.

Officials said they have been viewing the past two weeks as an opportunity to begin making the president's case for how to improve the economy for the middle class.

"It's a clearer way for the president to present his vision," said one official.

CORRECTION: This post originally misstated the current top capital gains tax.

Target To Close All 133 Stores In Canada

Target is pulling out of Canada, the retail giant announced Thursday.

The chain plans to close all 133 of its stores in the country, and has received initial Canadian court approval to go through with the liquidation process. The decision comes after a review by company executives found that Target Canada wouldn’t become profitable until at least 2021, according to a statement by Brian Cornell, the company’s CEO.

“We have determined that it is in the best interest of our business and our shareholders to exit the Canadian market and focus on driving growth and building further momentum in our U.S. business,” Cornell said in the statement, noting that it was “a very difficult decision.” About 17,600 people work at Target Canada.

Target expanded into Canada in 2013 and has been plagued by problems ever since. Canadian shoppers were greeted with empty shelves during Target's first few weeks of operation in the Great White North as the chain couldn’t keep up with demand. Shoppers also complained that prices at the big-box store were too high.

Despite efforts to slash prices -- Target Canada eventually became cheaper than Walmart, according to one study -- and fewer inventory problems, Target’s botched first few weeks in the country left a bad impression and it’s been difficult to turn sales around. After a little more than a year in the country, Target had lost more than $1.5 billion in Canada.

Executives were hoping the holiday season, a crucial time for retailers, would give Target Canada a boost, but Cornell said performance wasn’t good enough to convince executives it made sense to stay in the country.

"Simply put, we were losing money every day," the CEO said in a Q&A on Target's website.

The Canada exit comes as Target is struggling in the United States as well. Once a favorite of middle-class shoppers looking for hip items on the cheap, Target is still working to regain trust after a massive credit card hack at the end of 2013 that compromised personal information of up to 70 million customers.

The chain is also suffering from some of the same ills plaguing other big-box stores. With shopping sites like Amazon and drugstore and pharmacy chains offering many of the same products in a more convenient setting, Target and others are struggling to lure shoppers out to the suburbs and into their stores.

Under the direction of Cornell, who became the company's CEO in July 2014, Target has tried to fight back, offering free shipping during the holiday season and launching a line of smaller stores in urban areas. Target is also getting back to its roots, focusing more on efforts like designer collaborations, which have led some to nickname the chain "Tar-zhay."

This story has been updated to include further detail.

3 Reasons The Euro Just Crashed To Its Lowest Level In 11 Years

Book that European vacation now, America: It hasn't been this cheap in 11 years.

The euro was in a crashy mood on Friday, briefly falling to its lowest level against the U.S. dollar since November 2003, according to Bloomberg. One euro is now about $1.15, down from about $1.40 less than a year ago.

Here is a chart, courtesy of FXStreet.com, singing the sad song of the euro today. It measures the number of dollars a euro will buy. The lower the line, the weaker the euro:

As you can see, Europe's common currency has battled back a bit, but it's still in a deep pit. Here's a longer-term chart, courtesy of Bloomberg.com, for perspective:

What ails the euro? At least three things:

Thing One: Europe's economy is in a depression, basically, that is going on its eighth year.

Thing Two: The European Central Bank is getting ready to buy a bunch of bonds to help the economy. This is basically "quantitative easing," the same thing the Federal Reserve did in the U.S., only about seven years too late. The ECB's bond-buying will flood the market with euros, which will make them cheaper.

Third Thing: The Swiss National Bank on Thursday threw a boulder to the drowning euro by giving up on trying to keep its own currency, the franc, artificially cheap by buying euros. Investors have been buying francs and dumping euros because Switzerland is a safer economy, basically. The Swiss hate that because it makes Swiss vacations even more expensive than they already were. But the SNB finally just said, "Eh, whatevs," and let its currency soar, crushing the euro.

Oh, well, who needs Alps when you can see Paris/Berlin/Venice/Barcelona on the cheap this summer? Assuming, that is, that Europe's problems don't spread overseas and cost us all our jobs.