Inside the world of Bollywood’s most iconic costume designers

Clothes make the characters, without the costumes that wear our screens. Think Bollywood’s love affair with chiffon saris and their sexy avatars, to Shah Rukh Khan-approved leather jackets, the opulent worlds of epic dramas—a la Sanjay Leela Bhansali—the anarkalis, embroidered details, and jewellery that complete that universe. For the second edition of Vanity Van, Cosmopolitan India is in conversation with three of the country’s leading costume designers whose work has redefined on-screen style.

Sheetal Iqbal Sharma

“There was a phase where Hindi films became too Westernised—everyone in Gucci skirts and Louboutins. I fight to keep the Indian-ness alive.”

Sheetal Iqbal Sharma is riding an all-time high. At the time of our chat, the Mumbai-based costume designer is still reeling from the joyous reception that his latest project, Mohit Suri’s Saiyaara (2025), has been met with.

Sharma didn’t exactly grow up dreaming of draping stars. In fact, his early years were spent dabbling in hotel management before drifting towards fashion. “Costume design wasn’t a childhood plan,” he admits. But cinema had always been in the air, thanks to a home filled with old films and conversations about storytelling. Slowly, his fascination with how clothes could carry a narrative weight pulled him into the world of films.

Returning to Mumbai, after a postgraduate stint at Central Saint Martins, London, Sharma’s first project was Ashim Ahluwalia’s National Award-winning period drama Miss Lovely (2012). “That was a turning point,” he recalls. “It taught me that costumes aren’t just decoration—they can create worlds. I would make a backstory for every character. It could be a watch passed down from a father, or a kurti paired with boots.”

A chance recommendation from there led to him being hired for Don 2 (2011), a pivotal moment in his career. Along the way, he sharpened his conviction: Costumes aren’t about brand placement, but about rooting a character in their cultural and emotional truth. “There was a phase where Hindi films became too Westernised—everyone in Gucci skirts and Louboutins. I fight to keep the Indian-ness alive,” he asserts.

In Saiyaara, Sharma’s approach to dressing the characters was deceptively simple yet layered with meaning. “Ahaan’s character begins in dark tones because he’s bruised by his past, introverted, shut in,” Sharma explains. “When love enters, you see lighter palettes: Whites, peaches, greens. And when loss hits, he’s back to black. Finally, at the wedding, he emerges in white to mark a new beginning,” he adds.

If Panday’s journey is told through shades and shadow, Paddla was about striking the balance between Gen Z cool and vulnerability. Sharma confesses he approached her look as though he were working on a Yash Chopra heroine. “We grew up on YRF: Rekha in a sari, Kajol in the emerald green shaara, Anushka Sharma’s girl-next-door charm in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008). There was always this organic Indian-ness in these characters that I wanted for Aneet,” he says. Instead of designer labels and micro-minis, Sharma leaned into what he calls the every-girl aesthetic. Think jeans with kurtas, oversized jhumkas, sling bags—a style instantly recognisable to any college campus in India.

While directors today often come armed with mood boards and even AI renderings, Sharma prefers old-school research: Poring over archives and visiting art galleries and museums. “I still mark paragraphs in books, highlight passages, and translate them into looks. It’s my way of resisting the easy Pinterest aesthetic,” he shares. Despite his continued mainstream success, Sharma dreams of working with auteurs like Mira Nair and Mani Ratnam, as part of their all-consuming cinematic universes.

And as for what’s next in film fashion, Sharma sees the pendulum swing towards period dramas. “Every third web series, every fifth film is set in the past—the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s. I think it’s because directors want to show Gen Z what life looked like before smartphones. There was an urgency then—writing letters, waiting for calls. Costumes can capture the texture of time,” he explains. But, he warns against cookie-cutter recreations. “If every ’70s drama looks the same, we’ve failed. The challenge is to break monotony while staying authentic,” he notes.

Veera Kapur

“Costume is subjective. It’s about merging visions until a look feels inevitable.”

Mumbai-based National Award-winning costume designer Veera Kapur has worked for over two decades, and her portfolio includes 1,200 advertisement projects and 72 feature length films. Yet when we speak, she asks me with childlike curiosity about the best thrift spots in London (where I am based out of), as she prepares to visit the city to source for some of her projects.

“I prefer the word costume design,” Kapur says firmly, adding: “I haven’t studied fashion formally. Everything I know, I’ve learnt on the job.” That “job” has now spanned films including Piku (2015), Bulbbul (2020), Sardar Udham (2021) and Qala (2022). And, she’s currently working with filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali on his much-anticipated feature, Love & War. It’s a full-circle moment for Kapur, who grew up mesmerised by the grand visuals of Bhansali’s films. “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) was one of my favourites,” she recalls. “To now be sitting across the table from him, creating wardrobes for his characters, it feels surreal,” she adds.

Freedom fuels Kapur’s artistry. She started out as an assistant director with filmmaker Shoojit Sircar, but it was styling for ads under his mentorship that unlocked her passion. “I loved seeing fabric come to life. When it became clear to me that a character is never fully realised without the right clothes, I knew this was my calling,” she says. Her turning point came with Piku, where actor Deepika Padukone’s relatable, fuss-free looks sparked a craze for cotton saris, tussar dupattas, palazzos, and oversized bags for daily essentials. Kapur admits the film’s styling was deeply personal: “Those clothes were very me. I wanted every girl, of any size or shape, to feel comfortable in what Deepika wore. That simplicity struck a chord.”

Kapur’s process begins with reading the script, understanding the character’s background, and then building mood boards before collaborating with the director and actors. “Costume is subjective,” she explains. “It’s about merging visions until a look feels inevitable.” That could mean converting upholstery fabrics into tweed-like overcoats for Sardar Udham when the right weave was impossible to find, or embroidering silver moth motifs onto organza saris in Qala to mirror the film’s haunting symbolism.

Collaboration extends to her actors, too. She recalls how actor Vicky Kaushal’s love for flared trousers influenced his look in Sardar Udham, and it was Padukone’s idea to pair palazzos with an oversized T-shirt in Piku to capture a “lazy night at home” vibe. Her most recent release, Aap Jaisa Koi (2025), allowed her to return to what she calls her forte—understated elegance. Working with director Vivek Soni, she styled actor Fatima Sana Shaikh in cotton saris, with particular attention to colour palettes.

Kapur’s treasure hunt for fabric is another story. From upholstery stores in Delhi for Udham’s coats to Kashmiri tweeds and duck egg blue silks discovered thanks to actor Aditi Rao Hydari, her archives are bursting with finds that often wait years before the perfect role arrives. Beyond Love & War, she hints at stepping into mythology, a hitherto unexplored territory for her: “That’s the dream,” she smiles. “Every project has its own challenges, but to build an entire mythological world through fabric and form… That’s something I can’t wait to do!”

Maxima Basu

“They couldn’t find a costume designer, so I said, you know what, I’ll do it. And that’s how it started.”

Maxima Basu began her career assisting filmmaker Daniel Boyle on the sets of Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008). It became the primary sartorial touchpoint for three consecutive films from the Bhansali-verse. Most recently, she collaborated and designed clothes for Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix-winning sensation, All We Imagine As Light (2024). When we connect over Zoom, it is her disarming honesty that takes me by surprise. “Fashion is new to me,” Basu says. “I wouldn’t call myself a fashion person because I haven’t studied it deeply. My love has always been cinema and history,” she adds. Growing up in a Bengali household in New Delhi, where Satyajit Ray was revered and Bollywood music was frowned upon, Basu was steeped in independent and art-house cinema: “On Sundays, we watched films on Doordarshan—that’s where it all began.”

The early experience with Boyle introduced her to the discipline and texture of cinema, and she soon found herself pulled towards costumes. On Peepli Live (2010), her next project, the production was running on a shoestring budget, and Basu stepped in when no one else would. “They couldn’t find a costume designer, so I said, you know what, I’ll do it. And that’s how it started.”

The film’s grounded aesthetic was miles away from her next big break. But it was the uncompromised authenticity of her vision that led couturier Sabyasachi Mukherjee to recommend her to filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali, for Goliyon ki Raas-Leela: Ram-Leela (2013). “It was too much, too soon,” she admits. “But Bhansali trusted me. Suddenly I was handling Ranveer’s [Singh] entire wardrobe, exploring the heritage fabrics of Gujarat and working with vintage textiles. That’s when I truly fell in love with costume design.”

What followed was a whirlwind: Bajirao Mastani (2015), Padmaavat (2018), Raazi (2018), and more recently Kapadia’s film. Basu’s process is deeply collaborative. “I’m a director’s person,” she says. “The first thing I need to know is how the director envisions the film: Do they want realism or fantasy? Then, I turn to the DOP for palette and texture, and finally to the production designer. For me, the actor comes last—not as a star, but as a character.”

Basu is also refreshingly candid about trends. “Retro has shifted from the ’60s and ’70s, when I was growing up, to the ’90s and early 2000s. And I see South Asian minimalism, that clean elite vibe, seeping into costumes.” As she wraps work on filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj’s upcoming feature, she still yearns to get the chance to work on her ultimate dream canvas. “Mahabharat,” she says without hesitation. “It’s the biggest canvas you can imagine: half humans, half asuras (mythological demigods) fantasy. It would push me to search for stories and styles everywhere.”

This article first appeared in Cosmopolitan India's Septemeber-October 2025 print edition.

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