It’s not just about clothes

October 13, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 12:37 pm IST

Rohit Chaturvedi has dressed three films featured at MAMI this edition, two of them are competing against each other in the India Gold section

eye for detail:For Rohit Chaturvedi, costume design is about a natural look than prepping up too much.— Photo: Rajneesh Londhe

eye for detail:For Rohit Chaturvedi, costume design is about a natural look than prepping up too much.— Photo: Rajneesh Londhe

He is a veteran of 20 commercial films, having worked with big names like Ram Gopal Varma and Rohit Shetty. Now, costume designer Rohit Chaturvedi debuts in the alternate zone — at Jio Mami 18th Mumbai Film Festival With Star — that too with not just one but three films.

Chaturvedi has dressed up the opening film — Konkona Sen Sharma’s A Death In The Gunj — and two entries in the India Gold section: Alankrita Srivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha and Sudhanshu Saria’s Loev . “So I have two friends competing against each other,” he smiles.

You could call it sheer luck but for Chaturvedi it’s a culmination of a lot of hard work put in over the last two years. Yet, like most things in the 34-year-old’s life, it wasn’t as though he sought these films out; one led to another. It’s been all about people, about meeting one through another. “That’s how the industry works,” he says.

So it was while working in Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan’s as yet unreleased 72 Virgins that he met actor-business developer Rashna Shah, who introduced him to Saria. The two hit it off right from the start. “He is funny, quirky, mad,” laughs Chaturvedi. What clicked was also their shared approach to work — it was all about the script, characters, setting, emotions than merely clothes. “I am not a clothes centric designer, I don’t just talk clothes,” says Chaturvedi. The film they were initially collaborating on never happened but Loev did, a film that he doesn’t like to bracket as a gay film but simply as a beautiful love story.

Commercial to offbeat

Saria then led him on to his friend Srivastava who was shooting Lipstick… on a tight budget. He took up Srivastava’s “not much money challenge” for the nuanced script and the fact that the film was character driven. “I read the script and called her up at four in the morning to say I was on board,” he recollects.

Chaturvedi is a rare designer who likes to be on the sets, at the shoot. It’s is also where he met Sharma, who was playing one of the key roles in Lipstick… She told him about Death… and that he would be on board if she would be able to raise money for it. “So a year and a half later Death… happened as well,” he says.

Despite switching gears to smaller, niche films Chaturvedi doesn’t look back at his commercial past with disdain. “I loved it, I can’t diss it. That’s where the money to make all kinds of movies comes from,” he says.

The move to alternate space was due to the urge to build up a solid body of work that he could look back with pride. “I needed to evolve as a technician, be treated with respect as an artiste. It was for the satisfaction even if it didn’t get me much money.”

But be it mainstream then or niche now he just grew into costume design, without quite having the required credentials for it: he never went to a fashion school for instance. “I don’t belong to the fashion world. I haven’t taken the traditional route of assisting designers to eventually [launching] one’s own label.”

In fact the Kanpur boy was studying commerce in Mumbai’s Sydenham College and preparing to be a chartered accountant. “I was like a headless chicken, didn’t know what I wanted to do.” It was while he was in the second year that he started styling for college fashion shows. The CA courses continued on the side, as did preparation for CAT. In fact he remembers bunking the CAT exam to style for an FTII diploma film. That was the infamous year that the paper got leaked so the exam was held again. “I took it the second time but never bothered to check my score.” Soon after college he started working with the production house Contiloe Films. He worked on four-five of their shows, including a horror serial called Raakh , several ads and music videos.

Building character

The big Bollywood break came with doing costumes for the song sequences in Ram Gopal Varma’s Darna Zaroori Hai (2006) , which was followed by Shiva (2006) and Go (2007) came up next. In hindsight, Chaturvedi feels he owes a lot to Varma. He helped build his career, gave him a lot of confidence to do things his way. “He has mentored so many of the flourishing careers in Bollywood today. I didn’t know how films were done. He showed me the way,” he says. In 2008, Chaturvedi worked on hardcore Bollywood biggies like Golmaal 2 , Money Hai To Honey Hai (with childhood favourite Govinda).

For Chaturvedi, costume design is not about throwing clothes on people. It is about a natural look than prepping up too much. It is about the script and the characters, their identity, contexts and development.

Much of the independence as a designer comes from the actors, most of whom, unfortunately, want to look good on screen. You need time to build trust and rapport with them to make them experiment. Commercial cinema allows little time together with them, but he feels that stars have also changed in the last five years. They have evolved and matured and don’t necessarily come with the baggage and insecurity about whether they will look good on screen.

Scripting a look

What is the typical work process like? It begins with the script — reading and dissecting it, “spontaneously, not to intellectualise it”. “I like to know the backstories of characters, where they are coming from, why they are the way they are,” he says. There are discussions with the filmmakers in general about the feel of the film, what the film is trying to say.

The second stage is of research, reference, deciding on the palette, making sketches and mood boards. He does all of it on his own. Once the look has been developed and decided upon its about getting fabrics and samples, doing look tests, making look books and finally the suppliers, tailors and assistants come in for measuring, making and delivering.

It is period cinema like Death… that excites as well as challenges Chaturvedi the most. “When it comes to retro there is a tendency to caricaturise. If it is the 70s (the period Death … is set in) it immediately becomes about loud prints, hoops for earrings and bell bottoms. I had to make it real than exaggerated,” he says. For Lipstick …, set in lower middle class Bhopal he went to the actual localities where it is set and shot to search for fabric, jewellery, lace. “A lady from that neighbourhood told one of the actors ‘ aap bilkul hamare jaise dikhte ho [you look just like us]’. I knew then that I had done my job right.”

All about teamwork

As a costume designer one needs to also work closely with the production designers and the DoPs (director of photography). “I like to ask them what they don’t want. Like in Lipstick … I was told not to use white.” Since it’s all about working closely with the director, Chaturvedi seeks to bond with them. “Filmmaking is a cohesive process. No single technician can claim that he or she has created the film.” Yet he likes to make the film his own, takes the work very personally and likes to get totally involved.

Clothes have made the Kanpur boy find a home in Mumbai, in Versova to be precise. But he still likes to see himself as a small town boy with a “mohalla mentality” staying close to friends so that they are just a shout away when needed. “I like the cocoon. You have to create families with friends in big cities. You need the cushioning.”

So no surprise then if there will be lots of them cheering on when his films take centrestage in Mumbai this coming fortnight.

I like to know the backstories of characters, why they are the way they are, says Chaturvedi

Looks just right

Rohit Chaturvedi shares his pick of MAMI films to look out for this edition. He says, “I like watching personal films, films that tell human stories, that have people in focus. The five films that I am looking forward to watching the most at MAMI have a humane thread running through them."

1) Pablo Larrain’s Neruda is about poet politician Pablo Neruda (on the run from the political forces of the day). It’s a period film set in 1948. It excites me as a technician; I am looking forward to the visual treatment in the film. It’s the kind of cinema I enjoy doing the most for the process of it—the research and detailing that goes into it. Your works shines the most in such films. It is an opportunity to show your craft as a costume designer.

2) Shirley Abraham and Amit Madhesiya’s The Cinema Travellers about the travelling talkies which take the magic of movies to remote villages in the interiors of Maharashtra is a documentary competing against my two films in the India Gold section. But that’s not the reason alone; I want to watch it because of the passion with which it has been made, the fact that the two filmmakers worked for six-seven years on this project alone.

3) Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake stands out for its social relevance—the social experiment, bureaucracy and economy in modern Britain that it is supposed to talk about.

4) Elite Zexer’s Sand Storm excites me as a love story set in the Bedouin village of Israel. I like the idea of getting exposed to another country, tribe and culture.

5) Rajesh Mapuskar’s Ventilator seems like a very funny but honest film about the unexpected humour in the midst of pain for a family whose patriarch is in the hospital.

The last three films I’ve talked about are the kind in which the costume designer has to pull back and tone down. Your work can’t stand out but has to merge with the film. These are far more difficult films to do and pull off.”

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