The Art of Costume Design

Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya's name is synonymous with costume design in Hindi films. She began her career in the 1940s as a fashion designer for Fashion & Beauty and Eve's Weekly. The growing popularity of her sketches led to requests by actors and producers to design costumes for their films. Thus in the early 1950s she took the decision to start on a career of film costume design.

Bhanu was the first Indian to be awarded the Oscar for her work in Lord Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. Her work has been shown at the Festival of India, New York, and she has received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the South Asian International Film Festival in 2005. She was honoured with the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, recognizing her contribution to the aesthetics of Indian cinema.

Bhanu spent her formative years in Kolhapur, and graduated from the Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai, where she won a gold medal. Later she went to France on a French government scholarship to study art, culture and cinema. She has traveled extensively in cities like Tokyo, Moscow, Leningrad, London, Paris, Rome, New York and Los Angeles to study the best in art and culture. She has also visited Samark and Bukhara and Tashkent to research for the joint venture films Ajooba and Ali Baba Aur 40 Chor.

''Bhanu Athaiya is the revered doyenne of Indian costume designers...
For the benefit of future generations of filmmakers, film lovers and designers, it is important to document the landmark work done by someone with such knowledge, vision and passion. To beloved Bhanu I send my heartfelt congratulations on this splendid book.''
— From the Foreword by Lord Richard Attenborough

Bhanu Athaiya began her career in costume design in 1953. Over the next 56 years she built an extraordinary body of work that defined the aesthetics of costume design in Hindi cinema. Name any iconic look and Bhanu was behind it, whether it was Waheeda Rehman in Guide, Mumtaz in Brahmachari or Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram. She has to her credit an amazing repertoire of 130 films and has worked with every director and producer of consequence, including Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, B.R. Chopra, Yash Chopra, F.C. Mehra, Sunil Dutt, Dev Anand, Randhir Kapoor and Ashutosh Gowariker.

In this book, Bhanu recounts the eventful story of her life and her deep passion for creativity in design. She takes you through a fascinating journey, beginning with the classic look of the black and white era, moving on to the age of Technicolor typified by box-office hits like Sangam, Ganga Jumna and Waqt, and then to her more contemporary work in Lagaan and Swades. The book culminates in the story of the Oscar for the costume design of Gandhi – the first such distinction won by an Indian.

This is a classic work on the pioneering vision of a person who shaped the landmarks of Indian film costumes, set the fashion trend of the 1960s and 70s, and won Indian cinema the highest acclaim in the international arena.

ISBN: 9788172239435
Published by: Harper Collins Publishers India

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