CC2C stylist talks about designing the look of the actors : Bollywood News

As the box office, producers and stars of Chandni Chowk To China gear up for its Indian release this Friday, the film will also be a showcase for the latest entrant into the world of Bollywood styling - Jaimal Odedra. Jaimal was raised in England, educated at Londons prestigious Royal College of Art, and has worked with such design houses as Calvin Klein, Givenchy, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren.

Chandni Chowk To China is New York based Jaimals debut feature film and one he found hard to resist when friends Rohan Sippy and Nikhil Advani approached him. He immediately took on the challenging task of costuming not only the lead actors Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone, but also the supporting cast and hundreds of extras - creating a style statement that traveled from Chandni Chowk to, obviously, China.

Heres an interview with designer Jaimal who is now bitten by the Bollywood bug.

What brief were you given for styling the film?

I had an initial brainstorming session with director Nikhil Advani and then, after I read the full script, I started with sketches and visual image references for all the characters. Nikhils brief was to design and develop a very stylised, recognisable look for each of the film characters. Each character is like a superhero or comic book caricature. Our process was to first create a visual storyboard for each of the principle roles with photo references, colours, styling etc. Finally, after further discussions with Nikhil, we sat with each actor and discussed the costumes, colours and fabrics of each outfit. Then the entire costume line-up was sketched up scene by scene.

Who all did you style and how many costumes did you produce?

I styled the entire movie. I conceptualised the look of each character from the hair, make-up, to all the costumes and accessories. I worked with various hair and make-up people to do all the look tests initially, and to produce the concepts I had visualized. Only after this did we settle on the team which included Mallika Bhatt, the make-up artist who did Deepikas make-up. For the costumes we did both - design costumes and source them.