The BIG picture

Meerut-based Monika Kohli is a chirpy, Plus size 44-year-old, up-to-date on the latest fashion trends and styles. While strolling down Delhi’s tony GK 1 M-Block market, she gazes longingly at the tiny, spaghetti-strapped T-shirts adorning almost every window. Kitted out in a smart black kurta and jeans, Kohli says it’s a miracle that she managed to buy both here recently. “I could only find my size in London on my yearly holiday. It simply wasn’t available here,” she says, recalling what an ordeal shopping used to be. “I used to despair because I could only fit into the XL category in a men’s store,” she rues. Not anymore. Stores like Just My Size, and Pluss have introduced new sizes based on international sizing methods that are much more sensitive and tactful, designed to help customers relax and shop in peace.

The women’s store W refers to their largest size as VVG, that stands for Very Very Grand. Pantaloon’s six standalone stores for ALL start their sizing from zero to five, zero being the equivalent of XXL in a regular wear store. “We want to send out the message that you don’t have to be inhibited in your choices because of anything,” says Mumbai-based Sanjeev Agrawal, CEO, Pantaloon Retail. Other brands live by the same mantra.

Revolution, the store that can take credit for having kick started the plus size movement in India in 2001, has managed to stay ahead in the game because of an obsessive attention to detail and thought, on the styling of every outfit. Promoter Nisha Somaia, 36, emphatically states, her challenge is to get plus size women to feel good. After all, women all over the world have a complicated relationship with their weight and fashion. “I’m always trying to lose weight myself and I encourage all my clients to do so as well. But, why not look good during the process?” she asks. A plus size herself, Somaia started Revolution out of desperation, when she went shopping for a New Year’s Eve outfit and couldn’t find anything that fit. Revolution has 16 stores across India, and one in Dubai. Somaia has started lingerie for Plus sizes and is contemplating getting into men’s wear and shoes as well, where no plus size has ventured in India, yet.

Body weight and body image are inextricably linked and in our looks obsessed culture, fat is looked at as a bad word. Designers make clothes for gloriously thin models. Even the waist sizes of mannequins in shop windows in India have thinned down over the years. Fashion trends in plus size clothing mirror trends in regular sizes, tweaked a bit, to give the customer a more flattering silhoette.

Keeping in mind the pressure to be slim, most plus size brands follow the slimming rules of fashion in their garments; a monochromatic palette, vertical lines, deep necks and long skirts, to create as much of an illusion of slimness, as possible. Stores for the Plus size category in India seem a tad conservative in their approach to fashion, but as the customer is changing, so is the design process.

The XL diary
I have no qualms in calling myself overweight, or to put it really straight – I am fat.
The tiny three letter word has a whole set of phrases, clauses, greetings attached to it which are hidden for the rest of the thin population. Every time I have walked down any ‘fashion street’ in Mumbai or a strolled down Janpath in Delhi, the clothes stall salesmen call out to me saying, “Aap ka size milega!”
I am filled with gratitude that these strangers have been so merciful to help me narrow down my search for a good fitting kurta. I grit my teeth and enter one of the tiny shops.
The earlier mentioned salesman will then get into a frenzy, pulling the elastic of a skirt to its limit, and then breathlessly say, “Dekho meine bola tha, this will fit you!”
You may ask why do I put up with these kind of situations? Maybe I should just give him a good old thapad! Right? Wrong! It is difficult to find clothes that fit you well, if you are over sized. I do not look obese, but what fits my shoulder will not let the sleeves reach my wrists. If I find something that fits my waist perfectly, will most probably pinch my thighs. It is only a European brand that normally comes to the rescue with a large size fit, but not everyone can afford to shell out Rs 800 for a t-shirt!
People associate being fat with gluttony. But the truth is I have been through a merry-go-round of diets, I have lost 10 kg the last two tears, but they have returned to haunt me again, my basal metabolic rate has slowed down, maybe my genes are flawed… but who is listening? All people see is a fat person. Thanks for the observation.
“Now can you please show me a nice body hugging black top that I can wear for a party tonight?”
This question has sales women, in various lifestyle stores look totally flummoxed. They hum ‘Mission Impossible’ while I wait patiently. I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I am supposed to find a ‘freak’ looking back. My self confidence has been tried and throughly tested through elastic and XXL tags.
The saleswoman returns.
I smile.
Her hands are empty.
I was being hopeful, the store is just like the rest of them in fancy malls, “Sorry madam, we don’t have your size, can you try the stores that stock clothes for ‘plus size’ women?”
I leave hunting for that specific store, hoping it will have something that won’t look like I have donned a sack. Then I hear it again. A snigger.
If only people had mindsets with a bit of elastic too.