What I Wore - Padma Lakshmi - NYTimes.com HOST of Bravo's "Top Chef," now in its 10th season, Padma Lakshmi, 42, is working on her third cookbook. She is a former model who grew up in India, New York and Los Angeles, and now lives in the East Village. Dressing in the morning is always a haphazard exercise, done in semidarkness. I take my daughter to school and either I'm totally dressed when I get her there and keep going through my day, or I'm bleary-eyed in pajamas with my coat. I had a couple of meetings scheduled, including one planned for lunch at ABC Kitchen. So I wore a dress, which was a Diwali present from the designers Costello Tagliapietra. It's in this beautiful jersey material, which I thought worked for the day. And I had these rusty red Hue tights in my closet that I hadn't worn yet. They seemed to go perfectly. These Christian Louboutin boots I've had for at least four years. For me, it's either a really high heel or I'm barefoot or in sneakers. The sweater is by TSE. I don't have a stylist in my day-to-day, but I work with one on the show and he bought this for me for the Vancouver finale last season. It was really cold there. It actually has a hood on it, and you can feel how heavy it is. It's my security blanket, or I like to call it, my little manteau. People think that TV is three-dimensional, but it's really two-dimensional. So there are a lot of clothes that I have that are beautiful and very drapey, but they don't look good on camera. The trap is that you'll come off like a glorified weather girl. The camera doesn't recognize your silhouette through clothes unless you move. And for most of "Top Chef," I'm standing in the kitchen delivering the challenge or sitting at the judges" table. I wear a lot of Antonio Berardi on TV. It's structured and it doesn't wrinkle. That's something I really have to think about. We're not a live show, but when the food is hot, we eat it. No one's waiting for my skirt to get steamed. The camera keeps rolling. A lot of people don't realize I gain as much weight as I do when I'm filming. Sometimes I'll gain two or three pounds in a week; I'm not kidding. So for wardrobe, we have dresses in a 2, 4, 6 and 8. Women tend to gravitate toward the same size even if they know they've gained weight. But you'll look much slimmer if you just go up a size because it fits properly. Nobody is looking at the tag behind your neck. I do try to jazz it up a little bit. I am, in my head, a flamboyant dresser. I love jewelry and I love a lot of color. The gold cuff and pod earrings I had on are from my fine-jewelry line called Padma. Actually, I'm working on transitioning it into a costume line. The bag is Hermès. I bought it in Paris at a vintage shop years ago. It's a really great one because it's more of a baguette shape: longer and shorter. When you've got a lot of stuff, you can find it faster because it's not so deep.