Celluloid style

India’s only Oscar has been won by costume designer Bhanu Athaiya for ‘Gandhi’. It was only in 1995 that in India, a film award was instituted for Best Costume and Manish Malhotra became the first recipient of it. Costume designing for films has now become bigger, better and more professional. Projects such as ‘Black’, ‘Zinda’, ‘Rang De Basanti’, ‘Parineeta’ and ‘Bluffmaster’ are just some examples where designers have worked on the comprehensive look of the film.

• One man show: Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, who worked on Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Black’, says, “It is easier to maintain the overall aesthetics if there is only one designer. Two designers may have different sensibilities, creative egos may clash and there are things that you may have to forego.” As for the look in ‘Black’, “Sanjay had shown me certain photographs - he had a certain colour palette in mind. He knew exactly what he wanted, so it made my work so much easier.”
  
  
• Complementing each other: Often one character has to complement the other as they may appear in the same frame. Ameira Punvani, who worked on the costumes of all the characters in ‘Bunty Aur Bubli’ except those of Rani and Abhishek, had to make sure that Rani’s mother played by Kiran Juneja didn’t look totally different from Rani. “The clothes had to portray that they had the same genes,” she says. 
  
  
• Do your homework: While Sabyasachi was shown photographs and was lucky to have Bhansali’s creative team doing research for him, Subarna Ray Chaudhuri who designed the clothes of ‘Parineeta’ had a more challenging task. She would be working on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s work by the same name but yet the film was to be based in the ‘60s. It took her five months of painstaking research. She dug into personal albums and other visual representations of Calcutta in the 1960s. Says Chaudhuri, “When designing for a film, the connectivity of one character to the other, including the minor characters, has to be kept in mind. Only then can you create a look for the film. For instance, we had to redo the clothes of the extras in the Moulin Rouge scene overnight.” The look is never complete with just doing the clothes - “jhumkas, the kind of chotis, the lace and flowers or even an umbrella the character is carrying adds to the look of the film.”  
  
  
• Interacting with the stars: That apart, an actor’s interaction with the designer helps a lot. “The tight-fitted achkan that we did for Saif came out of his knowledge of what he had seen his father wear at one point of time,” says Chaudhuri. Incidentally, ‘Parineeta’ was the first film for which Sanjay Dutt gave a costume trial. “Mr Chopra and Dada (Pradeep Sarkar) convinced him.” Loveleen Bains, costume designer for ‘Rang De Basanti’, believes, “Sometimes you have to cajole the actor to understand your point of view. But there are no insurmountable problems.” Chaudhuri adds the most stressful part is the trials. “We had thirteen trials for Vidya Balan before arriving at what would really look good on her!” 
  
  
• Script requirements: Then there are the special requirements of a script. In ‘Zinda’, Ameira Punvani knew that the script demanded a dark and brooding look. “We had to make sure that nothing looked chirpy and bright. We used brown, grey, black and olive green. It was exciting to create different shades of the same colours for the characters.”
  
  
• The real McCoy: The most important thing is to keep it real. “Raj Zutshi is supposed to be a localite in  Bangkok . I had to make sure that nothing about his character was Indian,” says Punvani. The same designer who created a very international look for ‘Zinda’ completely changes track when working on the forthcoming ‘Benares’ starring Dimple Kapadia, Ashmit Patel, Urmila Matondkar and Raj Babbar. The film requires her to keep the look Indian. 
  
  
• Cohesive unit: “The film shows transgressions from the 1980s to 2000,” says Punvani about ‘Benares ‘, “the actors had to look like characters of the film, based in that period.” Designer Bains agrees, “It is very important that I know against what kind of background the characters are going to be placed, what lighting is being used, and what kind of filters the cameramen are going to use. The knowledge is essential to it looking like one cohesive entity.” As Punvani concludes, “The final look is usually a marriage of what the director has in mind, how the actor perceives his character, marrying all that with what the art director and the cinematographer has in mind.”

r_faheem@dnaindia.net