Wardrobe Non-Function

Costumes can make characters,as Bollywood has revealed over the last many decades. But if Bollywood now has costume directors dominating scripts with excessive focus on style,much of which panders to the market,the scene is different in Tollywood,the Bengali film industry centred in Tollygunge. “Character” is the hero here and costumes play only supporting cast. In the past,they were extras derived primarily from an accepted popular notion of Bengali dressing. Even now,Tollywood is not dictated by the market. Stylist Sabarni Das would agree. “Thankfully,I was not asked to create a look keeping the retail market in mind. The cinema here gives us plenty of opportunities to delve deep in characters,” says Das.

So while Kareena Kapoor,styled by Aki Narula in Kambakht Ishq,or Sonam Kapoor by Pernia Quereshi in Aisha,looked as if they were headed for the luxury malls,the Swastika Mukherjees and Raima Sens of Tollywood still look like the characters they play. “When Rituparno Ghosh discusses the look of a film,he expects us to know the characters thoroughly. He wants his heroines to look like the characters in his mind,” says Das,who has styled Raima and Riya Sen in Ghosh’s next film Noukadubi .

In last year’s ensemble film 033 (directed by Birsa Dasgupta),stylist Suchismita Dasgupta designed close to 100 looks for the six lead characters who play members of a Bangla band. “Much of what the characters wore were their own clothes due to budgetary constraints. Swastika’s long skirts and glasses received a lot of feedback but they were not stylistic devices,” says Dasgupta.

Das,too,has to fall back on her personal collection of sarees to recreate the 1970s look in Aparna Sen’s Iti Mrinalini . “In Iti Mrinalini,Konkona Sen Sharma’s character is a Bengali film star of the 1970s. According to my research,stars from that era used to wear a lot of batik silk and tussar saris. I had to raid my mother’s wardrobe to get sarees which would look authentic enough,” says Das,who was a journalist before she started her cinematic career with Aparna Sen’s Paromitar Ek Din.

The concept of stylists in Bengali cinema is still in a nascent stage. “It is not really market-targeted,so our work is hardly ever acknowledged. People only know about the designer or the stylist when the audiences start copying styles,” says Dasgupta. This is what happened with Aki Narula’s kurtis for Rani Mukherjee in the film Bunty aur Babli and Priyanka Chopra’s saris with sexy cholis in Dostana. Both became a rage. Tollywood designers on the other hand must be inspired by the script not the catwalk.

However,what plagues Tollywood stylists is budgetary constrains. “Recently,a leading Tollywood actress came to me and asked me to recreate Katrina Kaif’s look from one of her recent films,Tees Maar Khan. But her budget was only R 10000. I was appalled and obviously refused the offer,” says Amohaa Das who styles for leading glossies of Kolkata.” The wardrobe budget of a typical Tollywood film varies from R10,000 to R30,000. “That’s is probably less than what Bollywood stylists spend for one costume of the heroine. There have been quite a few instances where we had to compromise on quality,” says Dasgupta.