Melissa McCarthy isn’t accepting the fashion status quo, so she started her own clothing line with dressmaker and collaborator Daniella Pearl in 2011.

The Oscar-nominated “Bridesmaids” star, who has been vocal about her inability to find gowns for her shape, shed more light on her decision to start her own line: She was sick of being passed up at award shows by designers who refused to dress her plus-size figure, she said in the July issue of Redbook.

“When I go shopping, most of the time I’m disappointed,” McCarthy said. “Two Oscars ago, I couldn’t find anybody to do a dress for me. I asked five or six designers — very high-level ones who make lots of dresses for people — and they all said no.”

Ultimately, McCarthy wore a custom-made Marina Rinaldi gown, but she got proactive to make the next award shows a bit easier. That’s why the “Mike & Molly” star and the couturier teamed up on the line called Pearl.


“Trying to find stuff that’s still fashion-forward in my size is damn near impossible,” the actress previously lamented to the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s either for like a 98-year-old woman or a 14-year-old hooker, and there is nothing in the middle.”

She and the dressmaker already had a history too: In 2011, she collaborated with Pearl to glam up for the Emmy Awards, and they created a “wildy comfortable” indigo gown for the award winner to wear.

“I designed [my dress] and I worked with Daniella Pearl, who is an amazing couture dressmaker,” McCarthy told Us Weekly at the time. “I just didn’t see anything that I liked out there.”

The Groundlings alum said she has “always sewn” and studied clothing and textiles in college.


"[I] always thought I would design women’s clothing,” she said. “Then [I] ended up in New York thinking I was going to go to FIT [the Fashion Institute of Technology], and I started doing standup. So how A went to B, I don’t know!”