emma grede
Having been ignored by London’s biggest department stores, Stylist’s Billie Bhatia gets a hefty dose of retail therapy when she goes shopping with Emma Grede, the woman who changed the inclusivity game
WORDS: BILLIE BHATIA
PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH BRICK
Working in fashion, you would think that shopping for clothes would be among my most favourite things. But, truth be told, I have hated it for as long as I can remember. The irony that the fundamental aim of my job is to help people get dressed, while I struggle to do the same, is not lost on me. Over the past two decades I have dreaded stepping into clothing retailers – high street or otherwise – because, most plainly put, they didn’t seem to want me there. I had to train my eye to work out whether clothes that didn’t go up to my size would fit me, scanning rails for an oversized ‘something’ in a size I couldn’t claim as my own, but would work on my body shape. I got pretty good at it, but it didn’t make the experience any more fun. If
