WOMEN with lots of money, lots of weight and for whom finding clothes their size is a task of mam-moth proportions. That, in her own words, is Yamini Zaveri's clientele. The 32-year-old is India's only designer for the overweight, and her line Extra Elegance caters mainly to the rich and the upper middle class.
It was a stroke of desperation that caused Zaveri to hit upon this money-spinner. "I never found clothes my size," she complains. Necessity being the mother of invention, and occasionally even design, it was a matter of time before she ventured into a field in which she had no experience. "I am not a fashion designer by profession, I do not have a diploma in designing from NIFT or any other prestigious designing school. I realised that I had a flair to visualise clothes when women complimented me on my choice of outfits and so I decided to make the most of it."
Though her price tags are the designer variety—cottons are priced from Rs 1,280 and silks from Rs 2,700 upwards—Zaveri hates to be tagged a designer. "A designer essentially means two things. It means a person who has had a formal training, which I quite obviously don't have. And it means unaffordable clothes wear. There is nothing very designer about my creations. They are the kind of clothes I would like to wear. So every outfit that I make is essentially one designed by me, for me."
Zaveri wears only Indian garments—namely salwar kameezes and saris—and so it follows that her designs are purely desi. The reason for her not attempting a foray into the western fashion front is simply because "the structure of an obese Indian woman is unkind to jeans, skirts and T-shirts." But these limitations have far from inhibited sales. Women, in fact, have dropped their inhibitions and their saris, opting for an Extra Elegance salwar kameez instead.
Every exhibition she has held since she first opened shop at her Breach Candy residence in June 1994 has been a complete sell-out. The women who flock to her exhibition are mainly between 25 and 45 years of age since, she reasons that those below 25 still squeeze into jeans and T-shirts and those above 45 are too old to see beyond a sari.
"I remember wondering what to do when all my clothes were sold out on the second day of a four-day exhibition. I guess the shock of finding racks and racks of clothes to choose from, instead of plying through piles of material and then getting it tailored to specifications, was just too much for them," laughs Zaveri. "Large people think that they should wear loose garments to hide their fat. But that is a misconception. I design clothes that are very fitting. Naturally not like a body suit, with the bulges showing, but a size 49 is size 49." Chest size 44 is the smallest and 56 the largest on Zaveri's racks.
Her venture has undoubtedly been tailored to succeed, for she knows that she delivers goods that are not otherwise available. Probably the only other person who designs large-size clothes is Delhi-based Jattin Kochhar, but even "his large size, though designer in nature, is the kind that is available at readymade stores". Zaveri, who specialises in formal daywearand evening wear, confesses that though her clothes may not necessarily make women look slimmer, they most certainly make them look better. "I offer them an attractive package, not a tent," says she, describing her line. "And since the salwar is long, it adds length to the upper body, thereby making a woman look slimmer."
Funnily enough, Zaveri would rather that her customers slim down—even at the cost of her sales figures following suit. "I don't propagate obesity and I don't think that it's okay to be fat. Even I want to lose weight, which I eventually will. My only argument is that in the interim, why should one look like a tent? Though I have been asked to, I won't ever design for a slim woman. But if an overweight customer of mine loses weight tomorrow and then asks me to design for her, I most certainly will."
Her immediate plan is to open a retail outlet—a line of nightwear, kidswear, menswear and shoes—by January '96. And going by Zaveri's record, yet again, everything will be done on a large scale.
