The OG fashion influencer of INDIAN CINEMA

A new show tracks 60 years of work by Bhanu Athaiya, the late costume designer who continues to define fashion

- Pooja Singh

Bhanu Athaiya was always super busy. If she wasn't sketching costumes for a film, or telling karigars on the first floor of her Colaba house in Mumbai to ensure the embroidery on a dress was properly spaced out, she would be in the lanes of Mumbai's Zaveri Bazaar, shopping for fabric, or ina museum, reading about a traditional embroidery that might come to life in her next film project.

Being a costume designer in an era when Indian film stories were served in black and white required a different kind of modus operandi. There was no internet to tell you who wore what and when. Very few fashion history books occupied space on library shelves. You were a one-person army who did their own research to figure out what each of the 100-something film characters from the protagonist to the crowd behind her or him-should wear to bring their role alive.

It was a process Athaiya, who died at age 91 in 2020, relished. She worked in over 100 Indian films, from 1953's Aasto 2014's Nagrik. She was the first Indian to win an Oscar for the country, for costumes in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982).

Now her work will be showcased in The Prinseps Exhibition: Legacy Of Bhanu Athaiya. Starting 28 January at Delhi's Bikaner House, the show will feature over 50 works, including oil and water paintings, sketches and costumes designed for films like Lagaan (2001) and Gandhi.

"My mother could work for days at a stretch," recalls Radhika Gupta, who has spent most of her life researching crafts. "My father used to say to me: 'Your birth was held up because your mother was busy sketching and meeting a deadline.' She was in labour but continued to work. They reached the hospital at 4am and I came at 9.30am."