Dressing up 3 eras
There’s no getting away with trying to cheat the camera, believes costume designer Ameira Punvani
Abhishek Bachchan’s look in the film Guru was much talked about. His transition from a 20- something ambitious guy to a middle- aged successful businessman didn’t just require him to act well to be nominated for all the awards, but also required him to convincingly look the part of an older man. And in this, the magic of his costumes that designer Ameira Punvani created played a key role in showing the transition of the character through a long expanse of time.
Ameira won the Filmfare award for her costumes for Guru. Now, she has donned the hat of the costume designer for Bejoy Nambiar’s David. The film tells the story of three Davids in three time periods — one is a gangster in the 70s, another a musician from a chawl in the 80s and the third one is a character in present times.
While a major portion of the film shows the retro era, Ameira says it was a challenge for her to create the looks of the characters in that era.
“Usually, we have seen the gangster of the 70s with clothes that have garish, loud prints, but the role that Neil Nitin Mukesh is playing here is of an intense gangster. Giving him the conventional gangster look might have made him look like a caricature,” says Ameira, who has tried to keep his look subtle, yet serious.
While she was creating the look for an intense gangster, alongside she also had to create a “psychedelic” look for Neil Bhoopalam, who is playing the second lead alongwith Neil. “When it’s a gangster film, you have to be more particular about the looks of the different characters, as there are bad guys and then there are good guys. There should be complete demarcation between the looks of both the parties,” she says and adds that her major challenge was to achieve the demands put by the director.
“Bejoy goes into detailing. If the film shows the 70s era, the products that we are using to create the look should indicate that too. I had to search different markets for that. I got a Rolex watch for Neil’s character from Chor Bazaar,” she says and adds that the camera picks up when you cheat. “You can’t pick up a fabric from recent times and give it an old look. To get the fabrics right, we trekked all the way to Chakala,” she says.
Ameira also sat in the NIFT ( Delhi) library for few days flipping through the fashion books of the 70s and 80s to get a right understanding of the fashion of that time. She says she does her homework before starting on a film. Recalling an incident when she designed for the film Teen Patti, she says, “While going to meet Amitabh Bachchan, I guess I was overly prepared. After I was through telling about my idea of the character and designing the look, he quipped, ‘ Achha aap toh hamare role ke baare me hamse bhi zyada jaanti hain’.”
But sometimes, Ameira says, even homework doesn’t work. Like, during Guru, when the entire crew was stationed at a remote area in Karnataka, Mani Ratnam told her that Abhishek’s character will take a leap of 20 years. “It was almost night and I was given the responsibility of making him look older. Along with my tailor, I went to a traditional gaddewala. We bought a few thin gaddas and made a body suit for Abhishek. Thankfully, it worked,” she recalls.