Being a celebrity means your wardrobe choices are never purely personal especially when a red carpet appearance or magazine shoot is on the line. Stars and their stylists have long relied on designer loans to pull together those memorable looks, a relationship that benefits both sides: the celebrity gets a show-stopping ensemble, and the designer gets priceless exposure. But this system doesn’t work equally for everyone.
Numerous reports have surfaced of designers turning away clients based on how they look — whether that’s their body shape, skin color, or how many candles were on their last birthday cake. What’s changed in recent years is that more celebrities are refusing to stay quiet about it. Here’s what some of them have shared.
Beyoncé
These days, landing Beyoncé as a client is considered a coup for any fashion house. Back when she was cutting her teeth with Destiny’s Child in the early 2000s, however, the industry treated her very differently. Accepting the CFDA Fashion Icon award in 2016, she recalled: “When we were starting out in Destiny’s Child, high-end labels, they didn’t want to dress Black, country, curvy girls.”
Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour penned a candid 2019 piece for The Guardian in which she reflected on a long and celebrated history with fashion — and the subtle doors that have since closed simply because of her age. Despite that, she made her attitude toward dressing clear: “I don’t care whether re-wearing clothes is acceptable or not — if I’m feeling the dress and the occasion, and if it fits, then I’ll wear it again.”
Jennifer Hudson
Following a significant personal transformation in 2010, Jennifer Hudson found herself navigating a fashion landscape that suddenly looked very different — and her observations about that shift said everything about where the industry’s priorities lie. “The truth is, so many more opportunities open up when you’re on the other side, as I am now. I had no idea what I was missing out on. It’s like a whole other world,” she said.
Melissa McCarthy
The 2012 Oscars became an unexpectedly revealing experience for Melissa McCarthy, who went public in 2014 about just how difficult it had been to find a designer to work with her ahead of the ceremony. “I asked five or six designers, very high-level ones who make lots of dresses for people, and they all said no,” she explained. She ended up choosing a ready-to-wear gown by Marina Rinaldi instead.
Megan Mullally
Megan Mullally has grown accustomed to sourcing her own event outfits — but even she had to acknowledge the particular strangeness of doing it while preparing to host the 2019 SAG Awards. She shared on Instagram: “Looks like I will be buying my dress online though, as per my usual, even though there is literally a 100 percent chance that I will be on camera, because I’M HOSTING IT. Designers do not send me dresses.”
Octavia Spencer
Ahead of the 2012 Golden Globes, Octavia Spencer found herself without the designer support many of her peers took for granted, and she spoke openly about the pressure that created. “I’m just a short, chubby girl. It’s hard for me to find a dress to wear to something like this! It’s a lot of pressure, I’ll tell ya. No designers are coming to me,” she told the press.
Bebe Rexha
With a Grammy nomination in hand heading into January 2019, Bebe Rexha had every reason to expect designer interest — yet the opposite proved true. She went public with her frustration, saying, “I had my team reach out to a lot of designers and a lot of them do not want to dress me because I’m too big.” The response to her candor was immediate, with several designers coming forward shortly after.
Leslie Jones
The Ghostbusters (2016) premiere should have been a milestone moment for Leslie Jones — instead, it became a lesson in how exclusionary the fashion industry can be. After multiple designers passed on dressing her, she took her grievances directly to Twitter. Christian Siriano ultimately stepped up, putting her in a showstopping red gown. “It’s so funny how there are no designers wanting to help me with a premiere dress for the movie,” Jones wrote. “Hmmm, that will change and I remember everything.”
Cardi B
Even after “Bodak Yellow” turned Cardi B into a household name, her team kept hitting walls when reaching out to designers — at every level of the market. She addressed the rejection head-on in Teen Vogue: “I’m not going to turn down an opportunity because they don’t want to let me in, or they just don’t like me in their clothes, period.”
Ashley Graham
Few voices in fashion have pushed back against size exclusivity as consistently as Ashley Graham’s. The plus-size model brought the conversation all the way to the Oscars, and in 2016 she told The Cut that a lack of designer access had kept her away from the Met Gala entirely. “I couldn’t get a designer to dress me,” she said. “You can’t just show up in jeans and a T-shirt.”
Zendaya
Long before Zendaya became fashion’s reigning darling, her stylist Law Roach was navigating an industry that largely shut out Black women. Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Roach laid out the reality plainly: “Zendaya made it to the cover of Vogue, [and] she had never worn Valentino, Gucci or Chanel… We built that girl’s career and my career using smaller brands and emerging designers to prove a point.”
Aidy Bryant
Aidy Bryant spent years chasing down designers willing to make her something she actually wanted to wear — not something that felt like a concession. She told PeopleStyle in 2019 about the exhausting process of having to beg for options that reflected who she actually is. “I am young and I am cool and I want to wear cool clothes! I don’t understand what the resistance is to it,” she said.
Hayden Panettiere
When Tom Ford opted not to dress several celebrities for the 2014 Golden Globes, Panettiere simply went ahead and bought her own outfit. The designer’s follow-up gesture — white roses and a handwritten note reading, “You looked beautiful last night” — was a gracious touch, though it arrived after the fact.
Bryce Dallas Howard
Rather than waiting on an industry that wasn’t reaching out, Bryce Dallas Howard took matters into her own hands, purchasing her red carpet looks independently — among them the Jenny Packham dress she wore to the 2016 Golden Globes. “When you’re not ‘sample’ size, or when you don’t have a direct relationship with a designer, or if you don’t have a lot of notice, those types of size 6 dresses just aren’t that available,” she explained.
Khloé Kardashian
Perhaps no quote in this collection captures the fashion industry’s ingrained bias more starkly than Khloé Kardashian’s. Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar, she offered a reflection that was equal parts honest and unsettling: “I definitely think the fashion industry, and people in general, look at me more now that I’ve lost weight” — a statement that lays bare the exact prejudice every woman in this article has had to navigate.
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