Gabourey Sidibe’s Stylist Kelly Augustine Is…
Source: Gonzalo Marroquin / Getty
Actress Gabourey Sidibe has been having one hell of a fashion run! You’ve seen it.
There have been dramatic balloon pants, corsetry, exaggerated proportions, sharp tailoring, and enough quantity to make one factor clear: no person concerned is in making Sidibe shrink. The appears to be like, styled by Kelly Augustine, have earned reward across social media and fashion publications, with Essence not too long ago declaring Sidibe’s “style Renaissance” formally right here.
The irony is that Augustine’s work is prospering inside an industry that still isn’t constructed to serve our bodies past pattern dimension. “It seems like the representation that we have worked so hard for is just disappearing,” Augustine told HelloBeautiful. “So, for me to be working with someone so vibrant, so fun, and so beautiful, like Gabourey, I’m like, yeah, let’s turn it up.”
And flip it up, they’ve!
One of Augustine’s favourite moments got here with Sidibe’s velvet premiere costume, constructed around a silhouette plus sized ladies have traditionally been implored to keep away from. “Everyone is always telling plus-size bodies to run away from drop waist,” she said. “No, we’re gonna drop the waist, and we’re gonna do corseting, and we’re gonna do mixed fabrics. It was a mix of jersey and velvet. We’re just gonna kind of do all the things that we’re told we’re not supposed to do,” Augustine said proudly with a regal defiance.
Source: Kristina Bumphrey / Getty
For Augustine, the purpose shouldn’t be breaking guidelines merely for the joys of revolt. “I don’t think the ‘rules’ are real,” she said. “I don’t know if I ever believed that there are fashion rules.”
Kelly Augustine Is Here To Take Up Space
That philosophy runs through Augustine’s work and her own personal model. She is in quantity, proportion, tailoring, and drama, not dressing ladies according to a set of instructions designed to make their our bodies seem smaller.
“I think every now and then, you will have a designer that understands that fashion is about taking up space regardless of your size,” she said. “It is so completely ingrained in us to look at a plus-sized person and be like, ‘I can’t imagine that they would want to take up space.’”
Source: Bennett Raglin / Getty
Her strategy is the other.
“Ultimately, no matter what size you are, having fun and being expressive with your clothing is about taking up space,” Augustine said. “And that’s really all that I’m here to do. I am here to be a mirror to the person that you are.”
With Sidibe, that means translating an already outsized persona into garments worthy of it.
Their collaborative course of is surprisingly uncomplicated. “We just talk,” Augustine said. “I always say, ‘Hear me out.’”
And Sidibe’s willingness to experiment makes their partnership work. “She’s not afraid to try,” Augustine said. “That’s what makes it so much fun, too. She’s just not afraid. And I’m not afraid, so it’s like, all right, well, let’s do it and see what happens.”
The ease, the enjoyable, and the sheer meme-goodness of the completed appears to be like, however, can obscure how difficult styling turns into when a consumer doesn’t match fashion’s most well-liked pattern sizes. “Anything outside of a sample size, you might as well be plus size,” Augustine said. “I have had clients who were size 8, and that is still a challenge because it’s not sample size.”
Vogue Business’ Spring/Summer 2027 size-inclusivity report discovered that of more than 9,000 appears to be like shown across 219 runway reveals, 97.5% had been straight-size, while just 0.5% had been plus-size.
That shortage turns into further labor for stylists. Augustine depends on relationships with designers, tailoring, and an potential to construct a look creatively from what she has out there.
“Being plus size myself, I’m used to having to be creative,” she said.
Source: Gabourey Sidibe model
For one of Sidibe’s most viral appears to be like, Augustine paired an ASOS top with Eloquii bottoms. “It’s not about where the clothes are from,” Augustine said. “It is about how you feel in the clothing and fit. That’s really what makes the outfit pop. It really does not matter how much you spend.”
From Fashion Blogger To Celebrity Stylist
Augustine has been creating space for plus-size ladies in fashion long before movie star styling grew to become her career.
She spent more than a decade as a fashion and lifestyle creator and grew to become half of the digital physique positivity motion of the 2010s. Her purchasers today embody Sidibe, Danielle Brooks, and Michelle Buteau, and her work has appeared in publications including Vogue, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.
But movie star styling was not initially half of her plan.
“My only goal was to become Khadijah James,” Augustine joked of Queen Latifah’s magazine-editor character on Living Single.
After years working as a creator, visible merchandiser and producer, a referral (by yours really) led Augustine to her first major skilled styling task in 2020. She knew nearly immediately that she had discovered one thing.
“My first job, I was like, ‘Oh, this, okay, this is my job,’” she said. Her profession has since grown inside the very hole she spent years calling consideration to: fashion desires plus-size customers, celebrities, and cultural affect, but too often fails to construct the infrastructure required to serve them.
“At the heart of it, I just want people to look good and feel good and be comfortable,” she said. “I think naturally, because of the body that I exist in and the sector of the industry I’ve chosen to focus my energy, the advocacy and the representation and all those things are built in.”
“Existing in this body is a statement in its own,” she continued. “Just me showing up in the world is political in itself.”
The Future Of Fashion, As Dreamt By Kelly Augustine
Now Augustine is pondering past dressing purchasers within fashion’s present ecosystem. She desires to construct one thing that doesn’t require plus-size consumers to work around it in the first place. Her dream is a showroom and retail space where somebody may need an outfit at midday and even have choices for a 6 p.m. pink carpet–along with wide-width footwear, bigger rings, extenders, and tailors who perceive a vary of our bodies.
“I want everyone to be able to make an appointment and stop by and I’ll pour you a glass of champagne and you try clothes on and shop,” she said.
The imaginative and prescient addresses one thing Augustine is aware of intimately: plus-size prospects have often been pushed online and denied the posh of merely strolling into a stunning store, making an attempt issues on and enjoying with fashion.
“I very rarely get to go somewhere with the moody lighting around the mirror and the velvet curtains and the bouclé couch and, you know, just take my clothes off and play around in the mirror,” she said. “I’ve had to create that experience in my home.”
Perhaps the largest shift in Augustine’s profession, however, has less to do with fashion than with how she understands success. Until not too long ago, she said, she believed achievement had to harm before it counted. “I believed that I had to struggle in order to enjoy success,” Augustine said. “If my job feels too seamless, instead of me thinking, ‘Oh, I have put systems in place to make this a little more easy for myself,’ I’m like, ‘Oh, I must have done something wrong.’”
She is aware of better now. “It just means that I’ve had enough experience where I know what needs to be put in place so that my job runs smoother,” she said. “Everything just doesn’t have to be a struggle.”
Kelly Augustine has spent years changing into expert at navigating an industry that makes dressing plus-size ladies unnecessarily troublesome. Increasingly, though, her ambition is to construct a fashion world past those limitations where they never needed to exist in the first place.
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