‘She was into characters, not the dress’

Updated On: 10 December, 2023 04:22 AM IST | Mumbai | Shweta Shiware

Gold medallist from Sir JJ School of Art, only woman in Progressive Artists’ Group—Mumbai had a lasting influence on Bhanu Athaiya. A new exhibit in Goa traces the legacy of the modernist painter and pioneering costume designer

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Bhanu Athaiya’s first film project with actor Kamini Kaushal was Aas (1953). This Western outfit had “quite a risqué bodice for those times” comprising a transparent net base with scroll embroidery and a sweetheart cut neckline. Pics Courtesy/Prinseps; (right) Bhanu Athaiya’s appreciation for Indian textiles, drapes and silhouettes finds expression in this costume designed for Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978)

Shweta Shiware Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya is regarded as the most important costume designer India has produced in the last 60 years, a creative trailblazer who put India on the world map when she won an Oscar for Gandhi in 1982. (She shared the honour with British designer, John Mollo.)

This was the woman who gave us some of the defining styles of the era: Mumtaz’s pre-draped saree which was an upscale of a Santhal tribal female drape, in Brahmachari (1968); the sweetheart neckline (her first client, Kamini Kaushal wore it in Aas, 1953) and the stretch churidar (Muqaddar ka Sikandar, 1978, as Rekha danced, you could see the subtle contours, enhanced by the stretchability of the chiffon churidar). Athaiya helped spark a quantum shift in film costume design with her ability to speak up for the female point of view. “Bhanu ji was ahead of her time; she could create clothes that made you look sensual yet not vulgar; something that enhanced your figure, like the chiffon costumes she designed in Do Anjaane [1978],” actor Rekha writes about her “teacher, mentor, creative guide, and friend”.