Gabourey Sidibe’s Stylist Kelly Augustine Is Making Sure Plus-Size Women Get The Fashion They’ve Always Deserved

Actress Gabourey Sidibe has been having one hell of a style run! You’ve seen it.

There have been dramatic balloon pants, corsetry, exaggerated proportions, sharp tailoring, and enough quantity to make one factor clear: nobody concerned is in making Sidibe shrink. The seems to be, styled by Kelly Augustine, have earned reward across social media and style publications, with Essence not too long ago declaring Sidibe’s “style Renaissance” formally here.

The irony is that Augustine’s work is thriving inside an trade that still isn’t constructed to serve our bodies beyond pattern dimension. “It seems like the representation that we have worked so hard for is just disappearing,” Augustine informed 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 have!

One of Augustine’s favourite moments came with Sidibe’s velvet premiere costume, constructed around a silhouette plus sized girls 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.

For Augustine, the level is not breaking guidelines merely for the thrill of riot. “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 private fashion. She is in quantity, proportion, tailoring, and drama, not dressing girls according to a set of directions 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.’”

Her strategy is the reverse.

“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 character 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 seems to be, however, can obscure how sophisticated styling becomes when a consumer does not match style’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 seems to be proven across 219 runway reveals, 97.5% were straight-size, while just 0.5% were plus-size.

That shortage becomes extra labor for stylists. Augustine depends on relationships with designers, tailoring, and an potential to construct a look creatively from what she has obtainable. 

“Being plus size myself, I’m used to having to be creative,” she said.

For one of Sidibe’s most viral seems to be, Augustine paired an ASOS high 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 area for plus-size girls in style lengthy before celeb styling grew to become her career.

She spent more than a decade as a style and way of life creator and grew to become half of the digital physique positivity motion of the 2010s. Her purchasers at the moment embrace Sidibe, Danielle Brooks, and Michelle Buteau, and her work has appeared in publications including Vogue, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.

But celeb 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 actually) led Augustine to her first main skilled styling project in 2020. She knew nearly instantly that she had discovered something.

“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: style needs plus-size shoppers, celebrities, and cultural affect, but too typically 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 considering beyond dressing purchasers within style’s present ecosystem. She needs to construct something that doesn’t require plus-size consumers to work around it in the first place. Her dream is a showroom and retail area where someone could want an outfit at midday and really have choices for a 6 p.m. crimson carpet–alongside 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 something Augustine knows intimately: plus-size prospects have typically been pushed on-line and denied the luxurious of merely strolling into a stunning retailer, making an attempt issues on and taking part in with style.

“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 greatest shift in Augustine’s profession, however, has less to do with style than with how she understands success. Until not too long ago, she said, she believed achievement had to damage 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 knows higher 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 trade that makes dressing plus-size girls unnecessarily troublesome. Increasingly, though, her ambition is to construct a style world beyond these limitations where they never wanted to exist in the first place.

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