Raghuvendra Rathore dresses up Eklavya!

By Rohini Bhandari
3 February 2007, 01:50 PM MUMBAI:

If you thought only period films could be referred to as 'costume dramas', think again! Next week's release, Eklavya – The Royal Guard, a contemporary story of the royal family in Devigarh, Rajasthan, required logical designing of ethnic Rajasthani costumes for its multifarious characters and actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Boman Irani, Vidya Balan and many more.

This film marks the return of Vidhu Vinod Chopra as a director after a gap of seven years; and Chopra, wanting to leave no stones unturned to ensure the accuracy of each frame, signed on fashion designer Raghuvendra Rathore, who is himself based in Rajasthan and hails from the princely clan of Jodhpur. Trained at the Parsons School of Design, New York, Rathore worked at DKNY and at Oscar de la Renta before launching his own label in 1994 under the Rathore Jodhpur brand.

In a chat with Businessofcinema.com, Rathore spoke about his Eklavya experience and working closely with a plethora of actors, in his very first Bollywood venture.

"The script of Eklavya was very interesting for me because it was based in Rajasthan and I too hail from there. Also when Vidhu Vinod Chopra explained how the film was going to look on screen, I realised it would be silly for it to be done by any other designer," smiles Rathore.

While designing clothes for the film, Rathore worked closely with the director, music director Shantanu Moitra and visual director Pradeep Sarkar. Even as the script was being formulated and the film was tentatively titled Yagna, he asked Chopra to come down to Rajasthan with his core team so that he could show him real people and places, which would in turn provide authenticity to the film.

Rathore didn't limit his expertise to designing just costumes. He admits, "I called Maharani Gayatri Devi and arranged for Chopra to see the rooms of the City Palace (Jaipur), which have been kept locked for many years now. So Saif and his sister's room have been shot in the palace, which has never before been opened for shooting. I also arranged for them to shoot at the Devigarh fort in Udaipur, where most of the external scenes have been shot."

Of the clothes, he says, "In Eklavya, the script is just 50 per cent without the clothes; but the clothes are just 10 per cent of real fashion. The idea was to forget fashion and dress up the storyboard and characters. Since the movie is spread over three days, each actor had about four to five outfits."

Rathore ensured that there was nothing 'fashionable' about the clothes, "They are pure Rajasthani clothes and the fabrics used are from Jodhpur, Bikaner and Udaipur. Occasionally you will see a shawl from Kashmir." The three fundamental elements the designer worked with were the ghagra odna, safari suit and breeches, which have been replaced by chudidaars.

On being queried as to why he stayed away from Bollywood for so long. He says, "It is too big an expanse for me to get into without having any knowledge. It was quite a cumbersome approach to create the entire movie in photographic form, with each photograph having many options! I had to first take a photo of the actor and then work on a software to put clothes onto him. In coordination with the art director Nitin Desai, I had to take photographs of the background and superimpose my creations to synchronize with color combinations of the costumes," he reasons.

Rathore, who worked closely with Subarna Rai Chaudhari, costume designer for Chopra's Parineeta and Munnabhai, details the look of each character.