Life of Pi’s Delhi connect

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Fashion designers Shivan and Narresh, who have designed swimsuits for one of the scenes for Oscar winner Ang Lee’s latest movie Life of Pi, talk about the challenges and excitement of making their Hollywood debut.

Since it is a Hollywood project shot majorly in India with an Indian star cast, the duo say that this was one of the projects they didn’t need to ponder over and immediately took it up.
“We were approached by movie stylist, Arjun Bhasin, in November 2010. The challenge was to execute highly technical swimsuits under strict guidelines like working without using any elastane or lycra and avoiding any use of modern day closures such as zips,” says Shivan Bhatiya.
It took the duo four months of rigorous discussions, research, sourcing and manufacturing to make swimsuits that looked extremely elegant.
Though the two are happy now that they could not just meet the challenges but managed to bring in some authenticity in recreating period swimming costumes for a scene that involves Parisian women and men bathing in the Pincine Molitor.
“Our job was to produce the swimsuits for all of the 81 people across different age, sizes and body types involved in the making of this sequence in the film. So we used 81 different vintage fabrics impersonating various design details popular in 1950’s,” says Naresh Kukreja.
The swimsuits of the 50s and early 60s were cut straight across the top of the leg in the form of a modesty apron that hid the separate matching fabric crutch, says the duo. “Each one of the late 1950’s swimsuits had detachable straps and almost every woman appeared to be wearing what we would view as an equivalent of a beach corset,” says Shivan.
Since they had to only use cotton for the bathing suits, exploring various silhouettes along with techniques on woven fabrics such as smocking, ruching, pleating, pin-tucking, corseting and piping, which allowed movement while fitting like a glove on the body were elemental. The vintage cottons, which were mostly jacquards, were woven into bold stripes, foliage, floral and colour blocked in colours that ranged from whites, rosy pinks, pistachio greens, plums, sunny yellows to oranges. Silhouettes such as the apron-style maillot, playsuit, high waisted bandeau bikinis and halter style boy-short maillots dominated the entire collection.
The experience, says Naresh, was simply outstanding and it’s rather encouraging the way West is looking East for inspiration. He says, “And this is leading to more and more collaborations and newfound popularity of Indian designers in Hollywood. We would again like to be a part of a Hollywood project if something interesting comes up.”
Shivan adds, “Taking pride in our roots, honing and recognising our crafts as our biggest strength and amalgamating to suit our more relevant lifestyles of today, is what’s making us so unique on a global platform.”