I’m sure half a million girls want to look like her, dress like her, read her books (she quotes Jane Austen as her favourite). I bet half a dozen actresses want to be in her Miu Miu pumps, to be able to afford the neat threads and wear them with such chutzpah. But imagine spending almost every day scouring through international magazines, websites and runway shows, picking out dresses that you want to wear for your next event/promo/magazine cover, aping their hairstyles to the last curl. Imagine being known only for your packaging and not your work profile. I smell a left-handed compliment here.

Sonam’s newest film, Players, hit the marquee this week. The reviews declared the film a dud, with no more than a line of whine about this preternaturally pretty actor. But if anyone received maximum mileage from the film’s publicity, it was 26-year-old Sonam. Her Louis Vuitton trunks were armed with delicious ammo — in one city she wore a tres chic Rachel Zoe pant-suit, in another a sharp red Elie Saab dress. Her Shane and Falguni tribal dress with pinched shoulders is so very Balmain. In Dubai, she wore a provocative conical bra Grecian dress by the famous agent provocateur Jean Paul Gaultier. Her hair is always tressed imaginatively and elegantly, where each seemingly careless wisp is calculated.

The fashion police is strangely ambivalent to her. Most adore her for bringing ‘proper’ fashion names into the mainstream — a Victor & Rolf black number on a recent magazine cover, if you please, while the rest of her colleagues don’t know beyond the Diors, Chanels and Louis Vuittons of corporate-celebrity tie-ups. Many are sharpy critical of how studied her style really is. A Mumbai eveninger even published photos from Sonam’s diary where she had copied the looks to the T. Sonam’s wardrobe is always discussed, she’s even launched the careers of half-a-dozen fashion bloggers.

There are many actors who use what they have in their kitchens for maximum exposure. Bipasha Basu may always rely on her “hotness”, but will never be known as a screen legend. Shilpa Shetty may have the best body in the business, but who remembers her last film? Actresses strangely have an inversely proportionate ratio where success and fashionability are concerned. Katrina Kaif is a boring dresser, Kareena Kapoor’s net saris with antique borders make me want to murder my old friend Manish Malhotra. And let’s just heave a sigh of relief that Vidya Balan is channeling the inner Rekha within her.

Sonam, like Lady Gaga, has used fashion to sell herself to her fans. In that, she’s had a great idea. But now that she has our attention, she’d better do something worthwhile with it.

Sonam may be India’s most fashionable actor, but a style icon takes an indefinable originality and a certain quirkiness. Fashion is, sometimes, just about the clothes.