Kelly Osbourne is launching a clothing line — Stories by Kelly Osbourne — on September 25 on HSN. But the reality star/red carpet correspondent/Fashion Police host has an interesting take on the business of making clothes: "I don't think the fashion industry is fair," she says.
In an interview with Glamour.com's Nikki Ogunnaike, Kelly breaks it down:
I'm not trying to be the next, you know, Stella McCartney or the next big thing in fashion, I'm trying to make fashion fair.
She adds that she wants to "make women feel beautiful and make clothing from size 0 to 24." And she's serious about accommodating different sizes:
We cut three patterns, and if the design doesn't look good in all three it does not go through.
Kelly's own experiences — with weight ups and downs and body insecurities — have informed the way she designs, she explained to WWD earlier this month:
Because I have been everything from a size 0 to pretty much almost a 16, depending on the brand, it made me realize all the tricks I had learned to cover up certain areas or to detract from certain areas, and what I like in clothing.
Items — produced by Jupi Corp., her manufacturing partner — are priced between $55 and $170, and nothing — except for the motorcycle jackets — is dry-clean only. These are not earth-shattering designs — just skirts, dresses, tees and a couple of jumpsuits — and Kelly knows it, telling WWD: "My mission is not to be the number-one fashion designer in the world. I'm not trying to change or come up with anything that people haven't already done. I'm just trying to make fashion fair and make good quality basics available to all women."
It sucks that the clothes will only be on HSN — meaning you have to buy to try — but for a lot of plus-size shoppers, that's just the way it is these days: Your sizes are not in stores, anyway.
Still, the fact that Kelly is dedicated to making sure a variety of women can wear the items — "I not only wanted to make it for all shapes and sizes but for all ages as well," she says — is commendable, even if it's "technically" not good business:
"It's not cost-effective from a manufacturer's point of view, but it was very important for Kelly to have every shape and size," said Bruno Schiavi, Jupi's founder and chairman, who declined to provide sales estimates for Stories.
It may not be cost-effective to provide a wide range of sizes, but the sales might just surprise the folks at Jupi, since the plus-size market is notoriously underserved. And frankly, Kelly's attitude about the entire situation (she refused to partner with other manufacturers who didn't want to go up to size 24) is reason enough to support this line. As she puts it: "It's really unfair that America has this disillusion that the most common size is size 14, and that's only because that's as big as most fashion designers go."
Images via Getty, Stories by Kelly Osbourne.