HYDERABAD: Fashion designers wield their artistic prowess, meticulously crafting costumes that seamlessly blend with the character’s persona, accentuating their emotions and transforming actors into captivating embodiments of storytelling. Through their creative vision, they breathe life into the movie role, infusing it with style, authenticity, and a visual language that resonates with audiences.
CE speaks to fashion designers to explore how fashion designers bring the movie role to life. Ayesha Mariam, a fashion designer in movies like Panchatantram, Disco Raja, Ruler, Loser, Masooda, Rudrangi, Jersey, and Dasara, reflecting on her journey, shares, “Winning a dictionary in an embroidery competition ignited a spark within me to become a fashion designer. However, life took a different turn; I got married. Thankfully, with unwavering support from my husband, I embarked on my journey as an assistant stylist in 2017, and there was no turning back.”
When asked how she curates costumes that breathe life into each character, she said, “Raw inputs from directors and extensive research shape our creative process. For instance, I went to Veerlapally (a village in Dasara) for the Dasara movie, talked to locals, and researched the clothing style, materials, how women lived, and which type of earrings they carried during the 1990s and 2000s.”
Unveiling the magic behind the character’s styling, Ayesha reveals her process for selecting the perfect patterns and colours. She provided an exclusive glimpse into her latest movie (Selfish, shooting is still ongoing). “I believe costumes speak. For instance, in Selfish, the protagonist is an orphan boy from Dhoolpet with anomalous behaviour, so I decided his clothing style is clumsy, like the unmatched shirt and jeans. But love changed everything for him as he transformed his dressing style to win over the heroine’s heart; now he carries a shirt with a stripe design, a gentleman’s look.”
Sharing the challenges encountered in designing, she said, “It’s not a challenge. We enjoy the process. For example, the iconic yellow saree worn by Keerthy Suresh for a dance in Dasara. For originality, we coloured the white saree in yellow by dipping it into the turmeric powder solution, and that’s what people used to do in Veerlapally village.”
Ganesh Nallari is a dentist turned fashion designer from Hyderabad. Sharing his journey as a fashion designer, Ganesh said, “I worked as a costume designer and stylist in movies like Jhummandi Naadam, Veera, and Mr Perfect. As a fashion designer, I first understand our characters and clients. When you’re designing, you need to understand their personality and what would look best on them because we can’t take costume designing for granted. There are a few things that I need to understand as a fashion designer — the director briefs about the character. I need to understand the character’s nature, and now I will come up with ideas. Apart from that, I also need to understand the sensibility of the director, the creator of the movie. Then we imagine the character.”
He added that different directors have different senses of working. “For example, Raghavendra Rao has a very different aesthetic. His sense of portraying an actor is very different from, let’s say, Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Everybody has their style. As a designer, I should also be willing to work in that style, and okay, I will give the best version of the character.”
Sharing the challenges encountered in designing, Ganesh said, “Challenges in movies are completing the work in the time frame and sometimes also within the budget.”