The 79th Cannes Film Festival marked Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's 24th appearance since her debut in 2002. Her red carpet walk took the internet by storm as fans eagerly waited for the Cannes regular, especially after the absence of her poster from L'Oreal Paris's branding video at the Hotel Martinez.
As the Ponniyin Selvan star walked in an abyss-blue Amit Aggarwal 'Luminara', a couture creation centred around the idea of light in motion, she broke the Internet. However, when ace designer Amit Aggarwal took to Instagram to share details of the gown, social media users could not help but notice the skinny silhouette in the sketch, which looked nothing like real human bodies.
They even pointed out how the fall of the ensemble looked different on the 2D sketch compared to how it appeared on Aishwarya Rai. Interestingly, it's not just Amit Aggarwal but also other designers who create 2D sketches featuring slim models. To understand why such contrasting sketches are drawn, NDTV spoke to fashion designers and industry experts.
History Of Skinny Sketches In The Fashion Industry
Nikita Gujral, founder of a luxury bridal label, explained, "A perfect human body sketch since the Renaissance has followed classic proportions of length and width - from the face to the full body, to the torso, legs, and arms, and then again from chest width to that of the waist, shoulders, and hips."
She told NDTV that fashion illustrations based on these classic proportions are exaggerated to create a slimmer figure with a more elongated torso and limbs compared to a classic human sketch.
Explaining further, Nupur Tripathi, who has worked with Label Ritu Kumar and Ritu Kumar, said that these sketches help a designer communicate movement, drape, proportion, detailing, and the emotional mood of a garment.
"Over time, this became an industry visual language. Just like editorial photography uses dramatic lighting and poses, fashion illustration evolved to prioritise aspiration and visual impact over anatomical realism. The sketches are not necessarily meant to reflect real bodies, but rather the idealised artistic vision of the collection," added Tripathi, who is now a product development manager working in the textile industry in Canada.
Why Designers Draw Skinny Sketches
Designers Samant Chauhan and Ashna Vaswani shared a few reasons why designers continue to draw slimmer 2D figures that do not resemble real human bodies.
The reasons include,
- To Focus On The Garment - Fashion croquis (the base figure illustrators sketch on) are intentionally stretched - often 9 to 10 heads tall instead of the average human 7.5 heads. The elongated proportions allow fabrics, drapes, embroidery, movement and silhouettes to stand out more dramatically.
- To Create Elegance And Movement - A slimmer figure gives fluidity to gowns, couture, tailoring, and textiles. It helps designers visualise how a garment 'flows' on a runway or in an editorial setting.
- Historic Influence - Parisian haute couture illustration established these aesthetically long silhouettes before modern body-positivity conversations. Illustrators like Rene Gruau, an Italian fashion illustrator, popularised stylised proportions as an artistic shorthand for glamour and fantasy rather than anatomical realism.
- Technical Convenience - Long limbs and narrow frames provide more 'canvas space' to showcase detailing - especially pleats, layering, beadwork, surface ornamentation, and construction lines.
"So while the slim elongated figure became an industry convention, it is fundamentally an artistic and technical tool - not necessarily a medically or socially accurate standard of beauty," Chauhan added.
"For me personally, fashion should not be about shrinking women to fit clothes. It should be about designing clothes that empower women exactly as they are," celebrity designer Vaswani noted.
"But creativity should never be limited to one body type. A strong designer should be able to imagine beauty, structure, and elegance across every proportion. Some of the most powerful silhouettes today are being designed with inclusivity in mind, proving that fashion can look extraordinary on all bodies," she concluded.
The designers agreed that this norm is changing today. Fashion schools are also encouraging illustrators to sketch for the actual target consumer instead of a single idealised body type.
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