The costume designer

We interview Nalini Sriram, a costume designer for Bollywood. I think it’s safe to say that you were one of the pioneers of the costume design profession in the Indian film industry. How did you get started? At the time I started doing costume design, it wasn’t really a thing. There were a few professional designers like Bhanu Athaiya [who won an Oscar for her costume design in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi] but for the most part, the work was done on an ad hoc basis. The first movie I got official credit on was Mani Ratnam’s Roja. But it wasn’t like I consciously identified a need in the market and stepped in to fill it. I just went with the flow. Things were more informal back then — we were all friends. Describe the work that you do. I costume all the characters in a movie, from the hero and heroine down to the bit players. But in reality, costume design, like movie-making itself, is a collaborative process. I can’t afford to think about the costumes in isolation but have to consider the overall aesthetic of the movie. To that end, I have to familiarize myself with the script and the narrative right from the get go. So, before making any final decisions on the costumes, I must consult with the director, the cameraman, the art director, the actors—all the stakeholders, basically. What is the process you go through when you decide how to dress a character? Well, you work through the script in baby steps. First, you’ve got to get under the skin of the character. You talk it over with the director/ scriptwriter. Then you have to think about the look of the scene. Are you shooting indoors or outdoors? If outdoors, are you shooting within India or overseas? If indoors, what is the overall color scheme of the set? Could you dress your actor in white on an all-white set? You have to be on the same page as the cameraman and the art director. This is an industry that practically churns out movies, and in the time it’s taken you to make your movie, someone else could have released a movie with a very similar look. Then you’re forced to reconsider the look of your film. Finally, you have to think about the audience. Are they going to get your visual cues? If your movie is a blockbuster for the masses, you can’t get too esoteric with your references. Do you always prioritize these considerations in the same order? Or can it vary from film to film? I did a film a few years ago where the character was a modern, young woman. But we kept her in saris throughout the movie—and in very traditional handloom saris at that. The reason had less to do with our interpretation of her character and more to do with the overall look and mood of the film—handloom fabric has a slubby unevenness to it, which in the hands of a good cameraman looks wonderful on screen. We even clothed her in cotton saris, which had to be ironed and starched. Not many young working women wear cotton saris today--they require so much care—but with cotton you get a certain kind of crease that looks so, so fine on screen. People have criticized the film industry for its one-dimensional heroines. From my outsider’s perspective, it seems that a heroine is often just one more status object (like a sports car or designer sunglasses) to be consumed by the hero, and that the costumes typically reflect this aspirational aspect. It’s all brand names and flash, with little subtlety. Do you agree? Look, there is some insight into female characters. Could it be better? Yes. Is there any one party that we can hold accountable for the situation today? No. It depends on so many things: how the director writes the role, how the actor interprets it, what they require from the costume aspect of the visuals, how the audience receives the character, and so on. Every now and then you do get meaty roles where you flex your creative muscles. Recently, I did a film where the same actress plays two characters in two different eras, one in the 1920s and one in contemporary times. When costuming the characters, we had to think about how a woman’s dress might change in response to external circumstances, for example, the Independence movement and colonialism, and also how it might change in response to individual circumstances, for example, pre- and post-marriage.

Say your heroine is a rebel—what’s the local equivalent of a leather jacket? I’d put her in a paavadai dhaavani [a long skirt that covers the ankles, with a short blouse and scarf, typically worn by young women post-puberty and before marriage] which she'd wear tucked into her waistband so it looked like a shorter skirt. She'd also need a certain body language to drive home the cues, so you see it’s not about the costume alone.

What about a middle class working woman? What’s the local equivalent of a power suit and white sneakers? Say the scene calls for her to be riding the bus to work. She’d wear a certain kind of sari, and carry an umbrella and a stainless steel tiffin box in a bag from the local bazaar. How much input does the actor—the one who will be wearing the clothes after all—get in these discussions? It’s imperative that the actor buys into your interpretation of the character.Sometimes an actor may not want to be seen a certain way by his or her fans. He or she might have just filmed a role with a very similar look and doesn’t want to be stereotyped.Or perhaps, he or she has another movie coming out at the same time as your movie, in which he or she is playing a very different sort of character and doesn’t want the two roles to clash. Say an actress is playing a mother in one movie and a college student in the other: for her costume as a mother, she’d probably be averse to a matronly look as it would make her role as a college student that much less believable. Then there is the issue of age. There is so much competition from younger actors. A 40-year old actor may not want to be dressed in clothing that might be seen as “older” and that will put him or her out of the running for younger roles in the future. Finally, movie stars are in the glamour industry too. You have to make sure that the costume you choose goes with their complexion, their build, etc., i.e. they need to look good. It sounds like good people skills are just as important as creativity in this profession. Look, it’s a process of constant negotiation, discussion, argument. We’re welding something into place—everyone has his or her divergent views. But in the end the only thing that matters is what you see up there on the screen.