The Indian Wedding Craze
In a country that sees about 10 million weddings a year and with the wedding sector being valued at an estimated $50 billion, it’s safe to say that weddings hold great importance in our social structure. When it comes to women and wedding preparations, the obsession with the final bridalwear selection is mammoth. From popular Hindi movies where female protagonists are fixated over a wearing particular kind of wedding lehenga to celeb weddings that dictate bridal wear trends for years to come, the spotlight on what a woman wears at her wedding shines brighter as years pass by. The wedding market has given tremendous success to numerous Indian designers over the years that use heritage crafts, handiwork and rich fabrics to create matrimonial masterpieces for brides-to-be.
Image used for representational purposes only.
In such an enormous market of wedding wear for Indian women, you would imagine there’d be enough for everyone to choose from. That, however, is hardly the case, especially if you’re not a size socially deemed “normal”. The Indian clothing market has indeed come a long way to accommodate a wider size range compared to its recent past. Bigger sizes have been added to popular shopping platforms, brands have started customising sizes as per a client’s measurements and the clothing space has seen an emergence of various brands dedicated to clothing in bigger sizes. However, walk into any designer store and you’d be looking high and low for even one trial size that accommodates you.
The Indian Woman And Sizes
With the size of Indian women leaning towards the higher side gradually as per the MDPI and NCBI, the growth of the women’s clothing sector when it comes to plus sizes grows equally. With the advent of numerous homegrown brands dedicated to garments for extended sizes, the plus-size market in India is estimated to be a part of 12 per cent of the overall fashion segment in India.
Image used for representational purposes only.
Does this increase in the volume of plus size clothing available to women in India also translate to one of the most dominant, emotionally crucial investments they make during their lifetime: the bridal outfit? Sadly, the answer is no.
On Trial
In India, when you set out to buy a bridal lehenga, for example, the process is rather tiresome: visit several stores, choose what you like and the outfit is often customised to your size and preferences like colour, embroidery, etc. The journey of picking the lehenga, however, starts long before that on social media, where one can scour through hundreds of designer accounts and wedding wear accounts to envision what they would want to wear on their big day. But if you’re bigger than, say size small or medium (Sizes 8-10), this experience may slightly differ. Most wedding wear campaigns feature models who are between a size six to size 10, something that would look completely different than someone who is more than a size bigger than that. It not only becomes difficult to envision yourself in that particular outfit but also leaves you clueless about whether or not the designer can do justice to a customised piece in your size.
Image Source: Instagram/mishruofficial
An Experience Of A Lifetime
The experience of going into a store to shop can be more gruelling. Most stores that stock designer wear only have samples in sizes like six or eight. “I didn’t even get a simple lehenga to try in my size, which was an XXL, and this was a result of my visit to at least eight to ten well-known designer and multi-designer stores in Mumbai. Not only that, while some of them agreed to customise pieces that I liked, a lot of them even refused to do so, citing timeline issues. I had about 20 days until I would need the lehenga and that seemed to be less time for them to create a piece for me.” Says Quizal Mehta, who got married about a year back. “The most discouraging part was their seeming disinterest in catering to me, besides all the tips that came my way on which outfit I should choose to look thinner,” she added.
As it turns out, the bridal wear shopping experience could be disappointing even if you’re not a “bigger” size. Fashion expert Sujata Assomull spoke to us about her experience, “I remember I went to all the designer stores in Bombay and Delhi, and there was literally nothing (in my size). One of the sales assistants even recommended these slimming treatments to do and where I could do them. It was all kind of appalling if you think about it. And all this while I was a size 10!”
While the shopping experience is below par, there are other challenges too, like the ‘fat tax’ and design challenges. “The kind of cuts that a girl who is a mid-size or plus size would like are very different. And all the cuts that I see don’t take that into consideration. I think that when they sample, they need to sample on at least a size 12. You can’t just take what fits on a size eight person and size it up for a size 14 or 16. It’s going to be completely different,” she says, “A lot of what you see on the runway are on super-tall women wearing super high heels. Now a lot of women are not so tall and when you’re doing your pheras and you’re not wearing any heels. So that need to be taken into consideration.”
Image Source: Instagram/the_curvy_princess
What needs to change?
Besides the inherent attitude of salespersons towards brides-to-be, there are much smaller but crucial setbacks one may face. “In stores, they need to have pieces that are real sizes. I understand that they could not have fully embroidered pieces but they could have pieces made out of tulle, maybe pieces in an unembroidered different fabric, so people can actually try them and see the different sizes,” Says Assomull. What she rightly points out, is a very real bottleneck. Bridal pieces often feature-rich, expensive embroidery and unique fabrics, most of which are made by order by artisans, which makes it difficult for any designer to add these pieces as stock in all sizes. A couple of pieces and inexpensive alternatives, however, would be a godsend for a lot of brides out there.
Image Source: Instagram/shes_a_sixteen
Online shopping ends up pointing out an even bigger dearth of options when it comes to bridal wear in extended sizes. Only a handful of designers like Papa Don’t Preach, Abhinav Mishra, Mishru, Seema Gujral go up to a size 6XL for a couple pieced available online. Like most bridal orders these could take anywhere between six to eight weeks to be delivered from the time you order them. That said, many more designers offer customised sizes in bridal wear as is the norm, but not before charging you extra for a bigger size. While availability may not be much of a problem, when one is shopping online, there are rarely any pictures of a given piece worn by a model that’s not a size six of eight or even smaller. So the stumbling block of lack of representation for the curvier Indian bride persists irrespective of where you try to shop from.
Image Source: Instagram/papadontpreachbyshubhika