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Exclusive: How this Pakistani artist created a haunting look for Helen in The Odyssey
Oscar-nominated costume designer Ellen Mirojnick roped in Pakistani artist and designer Misha Japanwala to create sculptural pieces that reflect the 'brokenness' of Helen in The Odyssey
- PUBLISHED: Tue 28 Jul 2026, 12:57 PM
Can the world’s most beautiful woman also be the most broken of them all? That is the idea at the heart of Christopher Nolan’s depiction of Helen of Troy in The Odyssey. While the film liberally tweaks Homer’s epic, in its own way it asks a compelling question on what could be underneath “the face that launched a thousand ships”. What does it mean to live with the ‘curse’ of beauty? What does it mean to be a queen who must bear responsibility for the mass devastation of a war that began in her name? Nolan’s Helen, despite little screen time, embodies these conflicts.
No wonder then, the film’s costume designer Ellen Mirojnick wanted the look of a “broken statue” for the character. Speaking to W magazine, Mirojnick said, “We really had to get down to the realism of that queen.” Enter Pakistani artist and designer Misha Japanwala, who went on to create two iconic sculptural pieces — an asymmetrical neck and shoulder plate and a bronze choker — for the character that captured the essence of that inner brokenness.
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“I am extremely grateful to Lupita Nyong’o for mentioning my work to the costume designer Ellen Mirojnick during one of their initial meetings to discuss her character(s) in the film (Nyong’o plays the dual role of Helen as well as Clytemnestra),” Japanwala tells Khaleej Times. “Ellen then reached out to me to ask if I could help bring Helen of Troy to life through a piece that felt grounded, textural and resembling a broken sculpture.”
Japanwala says Mirojnick wanted the piece to go all around the body, which, in turn, proved to be challenging because she had never made a sculptural piece like that before. “They shared some initial ideas and sketches along with some fabric swatches. After going back and forth with some of my own sketches and finishings, we finalised the design and I spent the next couple of weeks working on it in my studio.”
So stunning was the outcome that everyone gave it their vote of confidence and Japanwala was asked to make a sculpted choker for another of Helen’s looks.
“It means a lot that the costume designers chose to work with an independent artist like me on these pieces,” says Japanwala.
Sculptural pieces are often not easy to carry. Japanwala says that both pieces were molded into Lupita’s body, finished with a patinated copper and brass metal coating that “I built up in layers without compromising the texture of the skin and details of the body”. “The pieces have ragged broken edges that join at the sides (a signature detail I have been working with since I started making my pieces), to evoke the idea of broken sculptures,” she says.
As an artist, Japanwala’s work examines “rejection and deconstruction of shame”. In many ways, it is also the essence of Helen’s character. “My artistic process is uncompromising in its realism and detail — every pore and feature on the body shows up in the finished sculptural works, and there is something extremely powerful and shameless about that for me,” says Japanwala, who moved to New York City from Karachi when she was only 19 years old to attend fashion school at Parsons (it was during her senior year that she found her way to molding and casting and a form of art, fashion and documentation). “These pieces for The Odyssey were created with a similar intention — to make sure that the texture of the skin and all the small details showed up prominently in the finished works.”
While Japanwala was not on the sets of the film, she says being a small part of a monumental film like this has been one of the biggest highlights of her career as an artist and designer. “I am also blown away by the fact that so many incredibly talented people worked together to bring this project to life, and to be included amongst them is something I will never take for granted.”
Anamika Chatterjee is Associate Editor, Features at Khaleej Times. A senior journalist, she helms arts, culture, entertainment and lifestyle verticals for the print and digital platforms of the publication.