Kelly Clarkson's Stylist on the Singer's Multiple AMA Looks: 'She Can Actually Be Her'

'A little diva, a little pop, a little rock all mixed in.'

Kelly Clarkson effortlessly graced the stage twice at the 2017 AMAs, but a whole lot of planning went into her three hyper-glam looks for the evening. After several missed opportunities, the singer's schedule finally matched up with that of Christina Siriano for this fateful collaboration.

"Basically with this whole album cycle she had a black and gold theme. It's very soulful, '90s, kind of mixed in urban with rock and pop," stylist Candice Lambert told Billboard exclusively. "She's pulled a lot from like, En Vogue and back in the day Mariah Carey Emotions. "...The big hair and kind of chunky jewelry, chains. That kind of vibe. That kind of era she's really pulling from, because she got a lot from that growing up. She's kind of giving love back to that moment."

Clarkson, with two performances and a red carpet appearance on her plate, had much to prepare for, and Christian Siriano was the easy answer. "He's amazing," Lambert explained. "I've been a fan of his for a long time, so has Kelly. We kind of have tried to work together in the past but some things have fallen through. Obviously she's had babies and life and so some of the events we were going to use him for, we hadn't had the chance."

It wasn't the glam of it all that attracted Lambert and Clarkson to Siriano -- he really knows how to dress all women's bodies. "He does all sizes, all figures, and he does it really, really well." Lambert had a long conversation with Siriano about the gold and black color scheme, "Doing kind of glam, a little diva, a little rock, a little pop all mixed in," which resulted in twelve sketches for Clarkson to sort through. 

After choosing to enlist the '90s glam aesthetics for the red carpet, it was a no-brainer to lean into the "Love So Soft" costumes for inspiration for its AMAs performance. "In that [music video], she's wearing this feather dress and it has feathers and these dancers around here. Well, she's kind of doing a different version of that tonight. Christian made this beautiful dress with feathers on it. She's going to have dancers and it's going to kind of emulate what the video did."