Celebrity stylists and fashion designers on inclusive dressing for all body types

Sample size or not, a power fashion fairy godmother, such as stylist-producer Rhea Kapoor, can manifest couture for a star with any body type. Bhumi Pednekar at the launch of Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre . Pic/Getty Images; A designer is more likely to custom-make an outfit for one-time use, if (s)he has an relationship with the celebrity. Seen here, Parineeti Chopra walks the ramp for Ritika Mirchandani at the Lakme Fashion Week x FDCI 2023. Pic/Satej Shinde; Though not a sample size, Sonam Kapoor’s brand equity as a fashion icon means most design houses would make and lend garments for the red carpet, without hinging it to her success as an actor. Seen here at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia. Pic/Getty Images; Early in her career, despite her success at the box office, designers hesitated to dress Vidya Balan as she was branded ‘unfashionable’. Seen here at the inauguration ceremony of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre. Pic/Satej Shinde

A sample size - that a model wears on the runway - is size two to four. So when our girl in LA, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, cried when reminded she was not a sample size, well… it's as much a surprise as the fact that we broke the planet, isn't it?

Though Chopra did not name the stylist who purportedly body-shamed her, it was assumed she was talking about Law Roach who styled her for an Oscars-related event. He responded saying his statement was "taken out of context". In an interview with The Cut, he had said that PeeCee's team had thrown him under the bus. "It's her gatekeepers," he said. "how they presented what I said to her to make her feel that way. I am sure it was taken outta context to get her to be like, ‘Oh, okay, I'm not working with him no more. He's insensitive to my body.' Which I'm like, ‘How is that possible? I've been dressing you since pre-pandemic, and it's been nothing but great things. I think sometimes what it is with them [agents] is that they have an agenda and I need to be the bad guy because I'm the one who's dealing with the clothes and the body."

Roach insisted that he loves her, and also "always dressed people that weren't sample-size." But the controversy followed him when he arrived for the inauguration of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre last week.

Jayati Bose; (right) Rick roy Pic/Anurag Ahire

The good news is, things are better now than they were five years ago, big thanks to naming-and-shaming. A few years ago, PeeCee wore a dress that dipped down to her navel piercing; the late veteran designer, Wendell Rodricks, expressed disapproval - that the silhouette was not an aesthetic fit with her body type, he said. And the Internet fell on him like a tonne of bricks.

#inclusivity and the decibel-defying volume of social media have designers scurrying to ensure no stitch is placed wrong. With influencers - who come in all sizes and shapes of the glorious Indian body - becoming more influential than the model on the runway, it makes more business sense now to allot enough margin in the seams and hems of sample garments to be let out when needed.

But it wasn't always this way. Movie stylist Rick Roy, who used to be a personal celebrity stylist at the start of his career, says then, it came down to the cool quotient of the celebrity. Not success, mind you, but coolth - whether the star was considered stylish. That's what decides whether a designer or design house would send a dress in your size for the red carpet, magazine cover or award show. Even as close as five years ago.

A star who has endured far too much of this discrimination is Vidya Balan. Even in the years of her greatest hits, many designers hesitated to dress her, say stylists, knowing the media would pan her dressing sense. "She was just not seen as someone who was stylish," says one stylist. Unfortunately, this was the time when the assured way to grab reader eyeballs was to be acidic and clever about what a celebrity wore on any shade of red carpet. Eventually, she developed a vocabulary of fluid Indian wear such as sarees… and an affinity for Sabyasachi Mukherjee, who dressed her for movies such as Kahaani.

Sonakshi Sinha, Parineeti Chopra, Bhumi Pednekar and even Aishwarya Rai faced similar limitations in the range of designers willing to dress them. "It all depended on how you branded yourself," says Roy, "The variants comprising the branding of ‘cool' change. It's a business, after all. For instance, even Valentino - a strenuously picky fashion house - would willingly dress Malaika Arora because she has always built herself as someone who is fashion forward."

The same goes for Sonam Kapoor, whose figure would strain the seams of an international sample at the bust, but never mind how her films have been doing at the box office, fashion houses will always bend the needle to dress her. You can also be reinvented under the wand of fashion fairy godmother Rhea Kapoor, as Bhumi Pednekar has, and most brands would not refuse.

And now that extends to fashion disruptor and influencer Uorfi Javed - who was recently invited and dressed by Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla - at the party to celebrate the launch of their fashion film, Mera Noor hai Mashoor. Just in the last decade, Uorfi would have been fashion commentators' favourite whipping child. In April 2023, she wielded influence over 4.1 million (very vocal, very wealthy) followers.

"Big girls also feel uncomfortable in some clothes," adds Roy, "which becomes apparent on camera, so you can't always blame the designer." Not so true for Sonakshi Sinha, who has always been super comfortable in her body, as per celebrity stylist Nitasha Gaurav. "She was always ready to experiment," says Gaurav, most recognised for working with Ranveer Singh, "so she would be grunge one day, feminine the other, and so on…"

Sourcing challenges arrive when you have the carriage of the girl next door, but reference pictures of what Deepika Padukone wore to Cannes. A stylist then has the task of adjusting the star's self-image to guide it to the right direction because a fashion house would not dress her.

It also depends on the relationship the celebrity has with the designer. "If it's an established star who is going to talk about the brand," says Gaurav, "mention it on social media, come to the shows, then the designer won't mind making a fresh jacket."

Then there is the practical side - some brands, such as Burberry, make many sizes and a stylist can pick the right size off the rack. Brands such as Gucci, may or may not have the range. So even director-producer Karan Johar tends to wear his own clothes from the brand, not borrowed ones, for a show or shoot.

There are also limitations of time-consuming couture. "A Rahul Misra sample can take three-months to make," points out Gaurav, "So it's just not possible for him to make one anew on short notice. The same goes for an upcoming designer [with limited production resources] - I cannot [ethically] request them to make a [complimentary] custom piece which may not get worn, or mentioned." Designers with the infrastructure - such as Gaurav Gupta and Amit Aggarwal - are more likely to make things anew; some designers even produce a separate rack of expandable numbers - especially of those outfits that have statement potential - to be altered as needed.

Former stylist and now creative consultant and artist Jayati Bose, though, is testament to how inclusive brands are getting. "Brands send me clothes," says Bose, who weighs about 84 kg and wears Size 16, talking about the clothes she wears on her social media feed. Albeit it's mostly blouses to go with Raw Mango or Anavila sarees and pieces from size agnostic brands such as Urvashi Kaur, Pero, Injiri, Eka or more casual brands such as NORBLACK NORWHITE.

For couture or high fashion samples themselves to be more in more varied sizes, the solution is to make the first prototype for models of various body types on the runway itself.