dolphinea, I'm going to be purchasing a few items from alloy.com pretty soon for an upcoming vacation I'm going on. As soon as I get the clothes I will report back to this page with the quality of the material.
~Ashley
Fashion to Figure is a great store. all types of clothes very cute very affordable... torrid is awesome too but can be expensive... I like that you can get the plus size version of some things in Hot Topic at Torrid. Lane Bryant is nice too but not edgey and VERY expensive.
Ever since I stopped dressing actually goth when I graduated high school over 50% of my wardrobe has been from Torrid. I haven't had too many problems with quality- the one thing I can think of that I really wore through was a skirt where the waistband eventually unraveled, but that was after about 4 years of wearing it more than twice a week.
Other than that, I'm all about scouring Buffalo Exchange (a vintage/alternative thrift store; mostly up and down the west coast, with a few other stores) for things that are big enough.