The two-year-old store Straps, is a brightly lit, trendy shop with perfectly articulate salesgirls who assist ladies shopping for lingerie. Encrusted in silver, somewhere on a polka dotted undergarment is the saucy line, ‘Handle With Care’. Except, this is no ordinary piece of sexy underclothing; it’s from the store’s latest collection for plus sizes. Straps has recently introduced lingerie in this category, two dazzling ranges called Beautiful and Iises, that’s full of racy colours and styles to flatter every kind of body type. “India has options for larger sizes in clothing, but nothing for women’s innerwear, so we thought why not try to bridge this shortfall,” says Shruti Singh, owner, Straps Boutique that has five stores in Mumbai, two in Delhi and some scattered in smaller cities like Surat, Ludhiana and Amritsar. The response to plus size lingerie has been overwhelming in the Metros and is slowly catching up in smaller towns as well. The look is stylishly naughty and distinctly unapologetic. “Today everybody is willing to pay to feel good. Old fashioned undergarments are a thing of the past for most women in India, no matter what they weigh,” says Singh.
The plus size population has been largely ignored by Indian retailers and brands in the fashion business so far. That’s even though research suggests that over 20 per cent of India’s urban population is overweight. However, this 20 per cent is now demanding to be acknowledged, and there’s suddenly an explosion of fashionable western wear and other products that are catering exclusively to this segment. This change has come about slowly with the workforce becoming younger, and western clothes make inroads even into small town India. The misconception that a larger woman would prefer to be obscure in a dowdy salwar kameez or a sari, is fading fast. In year 2008, fashion encompasses all, irrespective of age and size. Now large departmental stores like Pantaloons and Westside have launched their Plus range of clothing called ALL and GIA. Fab India, known more for their kurtas and salwar kameezes have started their line of Plus size Western wear last October, after a focus group discussion with regular clients suggested that they wanted the Fab India style in larger sizes. “More women in metros work, live in nuclear families, which is why the shift to Western wear has happened,” says Sandeep Agrawal, Owner, Pluss, a store catering to western wear in larger sizes for men and women.
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