Meet the celebrity stylists who make or break the actors you love

Celebrity stylists make their clients look stunning – and make or break the designers you love. Meet the power brokers of Indian fashion.

There is a big reason why celebrity stylists are often invited by designers to preview their collections before they hit the ramp. They are, of course, responsible for the way people like Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Priyanka Chopra and Amitabh Bachchan look, and if the designer who invites these stylists are lucky, they may just spot a piece or two that suit their celebrity clients.

This means celebrity stylists are responsible for two things. One: The way you dress. Because if you are a fan of one of the celebrities they style, you want to look like that celeb. And to look like that celeb, you will dress like that celeb. And two: The popularity of a designer. Because when you dress like the celeb, even if you aren’t actually buying your clothes from the celeb’s designer but contributing to the economy via a page torn from a magazine and your neighbourhood darzi, you crave the work of that designer.

This makes celebrity stylists very powerful in the mysterious world of high fashion. They are some of the few people who can make or break a designer or brand simply by doing their job. It wouldn’t be wrong to call them fashion’s new power brokers.

As designer Gaurav Gupta says, “India is all about the celebrity. If a film star wears your outfit, it goes viral and you become a household name instantly. Fashion magazines don’t have that kind of power. It is the celebrity stylist who has the influence to make this happen.”