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Bollywood design kingpin Manish Malhotra visited the Doha Tribeca Film Festival to dress stars including Egyptian actresses Yosra El Lozy and Dalia Al Bahairi. City Times caught up with him for a quick chat
- PUBLISHED: Sun 13 Nov 2011, 11:36 AM UPDATED: Tue 17 Sept 2024, 11:56 AM
Start of a dream...
I've been custom designing for 21 years and continue to love it. As a kid, I was fascinated by Hindi films and I used to paint and sketch. In 1990, I decided I wanted to do costumes. There were no male designers, and in Mumbai there was no Institute of Fashion. My parents were like, 'You want to be a tailor?' I didn't have the money to study fashion abroad, and I wanted to start working. I worked in a boutique and learnt the basics there, then after a year I started making costumes.
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Foot in the door...
At that time, I thought that if I could make a little bit of a difference I could get noticed. I was entering film producers' offices – they were looking at me like 'Who are you and what are you doing here?' I was fighting that. In 1995, I won the first ever Filmfare Award for costumes for Rangeela, and I think that changed it for me.
Staying out of fashion on set...
When you costume design, it's not about presenting the latest fashion, it's about designing for a specific character and helping the actor in their performance. And I'm honest with my actors – I'll tell them if something isn't working out.
On his style capital...
New York is a city that never sleeps, and I hate sleeping!
On steering clear of the Bollywood rumour mill...
It's not in my nature – I never ask actors about what's appearing in the newspapers. In each phase of my career, I've probably worked with actresses who hate each other, but the work is the only important thing to me. Some of those actresses may not be working any more, but I am. My dumb expression has worked!
His classic style hero...
I think Amitabh Bachchan, especially in the 60s and 70s when the style was so iconic. I think we've lost that, and now there's a lot of sophistication and minimalism. There's so much exposure to foreign lands, and globally we're all getting closer.
On gossiping customers...
That's a girl thing – their gossip is always about clothes, who has put on weight, I didn't like her make-up...but the men are even worse!