Why I Price Every Size the Same
When I started First Resort in 2018, I made one decision early that the people advising me thought was a mistake. Every garment in our range, from XS to 8XL, sells at exactly the same price. A plus-size buyer pays what an XS buyer pays. There is no "extended-size surcharge," no "plus-size collection" priced 25% above the base range, no quiet upcharge for sizes above L.
This isn't standard practice in Indian designer fashion. It still isn't. And I want to explain why I made the choice and why I haven't changed it in seven years.
The standard practice is dressed up as economics
Most Indian designer brands that offer plus sizes — and many don't — charge a premium for them. The justification is usually fabric: "more fabric, higher cost." Sometimes it's framed as a "specialty surcharge," sometimes it's invisible (the plus-size SKU is simply quoted higher). Across the industry, the premium typically runs 15–30%.
The fabric argument is true on its face and misleading underneath. Yes, an 8XL kaftan uses more fabric than an XS one. But the cost-per-garment difference is small — perhaps 8–12% on the materials alone, less when you factor in that fixed costs (design, embroidery, finishing, packaging, marketing) don't scale with size at all. The pricing premium charged in market is rarely calibrated to the actual cost difference. It's calibrated to what the customer will accept.
What plus-size pricing actually communicates
When a brand charges plus-size customers more for the same garment, the message is straightforward: your body is more expensive to clothe. We've added a fee because of who you are. The brand may not intend this message, but it's what arrives.
I've watched plus-size women internalise that message for thirty years. Every size up the chart, the sticker price climbs. Every fitting room, a slight apology in the way the higher number is quoted. After years of this, the assumption settles in — that being a larger-bodied customer is a financial inconvenience to the people selling clothes.
A pricing structure is also a message about whose body the brand was designed for. Plus-size customers know how to read the message even when no one says it out loud.
Designing for the size, not scaling up
The other thing the plus-size premium hides is that most designer brands aren't actually designing for plus-size bodies. They're scaling up an XS–S pattern and adding fabric. Anyone who has worn ready-to-wear in a 4XL knows what this looks like — a too-deep neckline, a sleeve that hits the wrong place, a waist that pulls at the bust because the proportions weren't recalibrated. The garment is larger but it doesn't fit any better.
A real plus-size cut requires designing the pattern at that size, not extrapolating from a smaller one. It requires a fit model whose body is larger. It requires sleeves drafted for the actual upper-arm width at 6XL, not a multiplier on the XS sleeve. We do this work at First Resort because the customer deserves it. The pricing follows.
What the same-price policy actually costs us
I won't pretend it's free. The XS sale subsidises the 8XL sale slightly, on materials. Across our range, the average margin is a few percentage points lower than it would be if I premiumised the larger sizes. I run the numbers every year and the answer is the same: the lost margin is small, the message is clear.
What I gain is harder to put on a spreadsheet. I gain the customer who tells her friend "they don't charge me extra," and her friend buys. I gain the customer who comes back because she felt seen the first time. I gain the long-term retention of the demographic that most designers don't even acknowledge as a customer base.
The next decade
Indian fashion is going to keep wrestling with this. The plus-size customer is younger, more digitally native, and less tolerant of being charged more for a body she didn't choose. Brands that quietly take a few percentage points more from her at the till are going to find she remembers.
I don't think the same-price policy will spread to the rest of the industry quickly. Established designers built their pricing models around the existing structure, and re-pricing a catalogue is hard. But I do think the customer is changing. And when enough customers ask the question — why am I paying more for this exact same garment — the brands that have a clean answer will keep the customer, and the brands that don't will lose her.
I know which of those I want First Resort to be.
Ramola Bachchan is the founder of First Resort, a size-inclusive Indian resort wear label sized XS to 8XL.