Emergency costume designer decodes how Kangana and he made weavers replicate late PM Indira Gandhi’s sarees, in their bid to ensure authenticity
Kangana Ranaut and Indira Gandhi
Nailing the look is among the many critical steps when making a biopic. It becomes all the more important when you’re telling the story of the former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. Sheetal Sharma, who serves as Emergency’s costume designer, says staying true to the subject was actor-director Kangana Ranaut’s top priority. “Kangana [found] references from archival videos of Mrs Gandhi’s speeches, newspaper articles, and albums from the Parliament,” he starts.
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The actor-director checks out the specially created sarees; (right) Sheetal Sharma
The film, also starring Anupam Kher as Jayaprakash Narayan and Shreyas Talpade as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, spans from the ’60s to the ’80s, with an emphasis on how Gandhi declared the Emergency in 1975. Ranaut’s brief was simple—the audience should be convinced that she is a spitting image of the late PM. Sharma says, “In The Crown, [Elizabeth Debicki] looked and behaved almost like Lady Diana. Kangana too wanted to look like Indira Gandhi down to the minutest details—her clothes, prints, fabric, and glasses. We replicated what she wore during the Shimla Agreement signing, or when taking the oath as the PM. We also [incorporated] the way she draped her shawl, wore French chiffon sarees and khadi blouses, and her famous hairstyle.”
For certain looks, the stylist hired weavers to weave the sarees from scratch, as per the fabrics and prints of the original. “The saree that she wore when she was killed is in Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, Delhi. We took pictures and replicated it. She wore a stunning white silk saree at Sanjay Gandhi’s wedding. Kangana made sure the other characters also looked exactly like the real [politicians].”
Gandhi had a sharp eye for handloom sarees. Sourcing them from different states was a delightful experience for Sharma, who found an equally excited collaborator in Ranaut. He says, "We sourced sarees from different states, like the cotton Tangail saree from West Bengal, Mangalgiri and Kalamkari printed sarees from Andhra Pradesh, cotton Bhujodi sarees from Kutch, and the Bandha sarees from Odisha. Mrs Gandhi was never seen wearing one particular kind of textiles. When replicating, we had some made by the weavers of that state. There was no compromise on [perfecting] the look. Kangana had more than 45 changes in the film."
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