Keeping it Real!

Think bollywood, think kanjeevaram mini skirts, lehengas with enough bling to support a South African country’s economy. Take a breath, think Lara Dutta running through a forest in Kaal wearing three-inch hooker boots and a leather mini skirt! Well, not for long. With bollywood shedding its uber glamourous skin, the threads too are increasingly getting ‘de-glammed’.

Take Shah Rukh Khan in Chak De India for instance, no designer glasses, no ed-hardy T-shirts, no dinner freshly plucked off the shelves of international stores. Instead, it’s all about shirts, trousers and mismatched basic trackies and basic keds! And, that is what has had people, swooning, “he’s looking by far his best,” was what a designer said. 

The idea as Shiraz Siddiqui, the man behind SRK’s look in Chak De says was to not treat Khan as a superstar, “Then it tends to get a little disconnected from reality,” he says adding that Kabir Khan’s threads are probably one of the most ‘realistic looks’ that he’s ever had. 

“The character is about a man with no fuss and the clothes had to depict them, they couldn’t have been anything OTT or glamourous. We weren’t showing him as a coach in London or Brussels that we could give him wacky designer sportswear. The character is very simple and basic, not contrived,” Siddiqui laughs!

Though Chak De isn’t the only torch bearer as bollywood takes its first ginger steps out of wedding catalogues, stylists had ventured out in their quest for the real touch even in movies like Yuva, Rang De Basanti, Omkara and even Swades. Be it Abhishek and Rani’s styling, Soha Ali Khan’s rasta chic and Kunal Kapoor’s kurtas in RDB or Saif and Vivek’s rustic persona in Omkara, the focus was on keeping it real!

The move as Siddiqui says is a part of the whole ‘u-turn’ that Indian cinema is making towards more real movies. “This is the kind of cinema we’re going towards, very cool, very today and very real. The best part though is that things are getting more and more real even when it comes to dealing with glamour which is getting more and more researched and referenced. In the next five years I see a lot more movies like this and looks coming into picture,” Siddiqui says.

Anna Singh, who worked on Omkara agrees, “Yes, the scenario has changed and it has been much more than a drastic shift since the 80s or the 90s, even glam is getting muted,” she says. Adding, “Not just the clothes, even the lighting the locations, everything is increasingly getting real and the shift is pretty strong.”

She however also credits the west for the change! “A lawyer has to look like a lawyer, he can’t look like someone out of a musical,” according to her the whole approach has changed from the song and dance driven bling costumes to a more casual look. There is however a little  advisory as well, “Things might be getting real with a vengeance, but remember, for every Omkara, there will also be a Jhoom Barabar Jhoom in which the characters will change their clothes at the drop of a hat!”

But the more important question then is - if Bollywood is getting more real, then would the real people still follow its trends?

Wouldn’t it then be losing its strangle-hold as a driver of Indian fashion trends? Would as many people copy SRK’s plain white shirt and beige chinos look as the ones who would copy Abhishek Bachchan’s upturned collars? Siddiqui inseems to think so, “A simple t-shirt and a pair of denims, if treated well can turn into a style statement as well.”  

s_kabeer@dnaindia.net