I of the needle

Century-old fabrics, designs sourced from museums, inspiration from old photos, creative hacks to turn back time. Check out how Indian costume designers are making every period detail shine

- Urvee Modwel

Have Indian costumers ever had it so good? All of a sudden, period dramas and comedies are all over Indian screens. The year's breakout hit, Laapataa Ladies, recreates a time just before mobile phones took over our lives. Ae Watan Mere Watan is set in 1942, amidst our struggle for freedom. A biopic on Indira Gandhi is in the works, as is a movie about Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, the Gujarati prince who sheltered thousands of Polish children during World War II.

And streaming on Netflix is Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar. The tale of courtesans in undivided Punjab of the 1940s has polarised viewers and critics. But its sumptuous costumes, created by Rimple and Harpreet Narula, are an undisputed hit.

So, what does it take to recreate a moment in the past, and design looks that illuminate a story without eclipsing it? We asked Rimple Narula, who also worked on Padmaavat (2018); Ratna Dhanda, costume designer on Ae Watan Mere Watan and founder of The Dress Anatomy; and Niharika Bhasin, who created 1950s garments for Khoya Khoya Chand (2007), turned actors into Ravi Varma muses in Rang Rasiya (2008), and gave costumes an Art Deco twist in Bombay Velvet (2015). They all say it's more complicated than it seams.

Choice cuts

For Heeramandi, the Narulas knew that Bhansali's vision runs both sumptuous and ambitious. They'd worked with him on Padmaavat and Rimple Narula recalls visiting the Calico Museum of Textiles in Gujarat, the Victoria & Albert Museum in the UK, and vintage costume shows for research on what royals wore in 14th century India. She even flew to Turkey and collected cloth from antique stores to understand what old fabrics felt like.