The glam gang

Outfits:Georgette, cottons, denims and organic fabrics were used for beach wear. In the London leg, the actors wore thick woolen outfits. The colour pallette was mostly bright with hues of blue, pink and red dominating

Hair: Instead of opting for an over-glam, blow-dryed look, the stylists suggested that they opt for straight hair with fringes. Almost 15 – 20 wigs were tried by the actors till they got it right

Dressing up girls is an everyday feat for most stylists, where requests of making the actress look glamorous is not new. But for Aastha Sharma and Mohit Rai from The Wardrobist, a fun challenge knocked on their doors when director Sajid Khan assigned them the task of turning on the glam quotient for Saif Ali Khan, Riteish Deshmukh and Ram Kapoor as girls. The all-dolled up actors have quite a few sequences in the film, where they seduce their friend’s male Humshakal. “Sajid sir was very clear that he wanted the guys to look extremely glamorous and hot as girls. It should look funny, but not clichéd or like a caricature. After a brief discussion, we worked on sample outfits and sketches for almost two months during the pre-production stage, before locking the final look for each character,” mentioned Rai. While a few outfits were sourced from high street brands available in the city, a major chunk of the dresses, skirts and tops were made from scratch by local designers working for the duo in Mumbai and Delhi.
While discussing the characters, Khan explained that he wanted the three actors to look like sophisticated and sexy girls. “They were asked to follow the mannerisms accordingly. We underwent various sessions of look tests, where they tried on different outfits and we zeroed in on a few. I had full confidence in Riteish, since he had already essayed the role of a girl. But it was a pleasant surprise for me to see Saif ace those latkas and jhatkas with ease. As for Ram, he just wasn’t ready to show off his legs and act all sexy,” mentioned Khan, who added that although they didn’t require any specific workshop, the entire parlour process made them realise what women actually go through. “Clean-ups, full body waxing, mani-pedi. They did it all. In fact, Riteish even insisted on matching nail polish. Can you imagine?” quipped Khan.

Skirting issue

Riteish Deshmukh couldn’t stop gushing about the fact that he borrowed his wife’s skirt and looked every inch (in Khan’s words) a ‘sexy girl’ in the song, Dil ki khidki khol de. The actor said, “Although I have had previous experiences of dressing up like a girl for other films, all hell broke loose when I asked my wife for a skirt and wore the same in a song. Woh skirt ab Genelia ko fit bhi nahi hota hain,.” That’s when his co-stars Khan and Kapoor quipped that they were sure that his waxed legs were enough to give a girl run for her money. Ahem! That’s some stiff competition for their female co-stars in the film.

Bling it on!

While the guys were busy looking their alluring best, the female leads weren’t too far behind. For the song Piya ke bazaar mein, designer Rick Roy was roped in to create rich, heavily embellished outfits for Bipasha Basu, Tamannaah Bhatia and Esha Gupta. Shot in the set up of a grand bar, the song has the actresses wearing ghagra – cholis made from hand-embroided fabric. While the patchwork technique has been mastered for Gupta’s look, Bhatia and Basu’s outfits have embroidered sequins and swarovski. After designing 20 sketches, Sajid zeroed in on six, the samples of which were tried on the actresses. It was only after the final look test for the song that the three outfits were finalised.