Designing an epic saga

Bollywood touch

The designing duo, Rimple and Harpreet Narula, are known to be  on top of their game. With their passion reflecting in their couture work that stands out in the world of diverse textiles and crafts, the designers always create something out-of-the-box.

Perhaps this is how their work caught the eye of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who got them on board to work for the Bollywood film ‘Padmavati’. Rimple talks to Anila Kurian about the work for the Bollywood film.

How did it feel when you received the call from his office?
We were over the moon! We didn’t expect a call so soon and it was a delightful surprise. We did some homework about the film before the appointment  so that we weren’t completely clueless about the requirements of the project. We still had our doubts if it was a dream or reality.

What were the preparations like? 
We had a few days to learn about the film before we had to meet Sanjay sir. Since it is a  historical movie, the theme was going to revolve around that. It wasn’t that difficult for us as our previous two collections were on similar lines.

Tell us a bit about your previous collections.
We worked on ‘Eternal Wanderlust’ and ‘Maharaja and Company’ before we took over this project. This gave us the confidence that we can do what Sanjay sir wanted from us. We still had a lot of support and help from  his team which made the designing process easy for us.

What was it like to work with Sanjay Leela Bhansali?
He is a complete genius! Even though our work was to give him the product for the film, we learnt so much more from the process. We are truly blessed to have worked with such a brilliant man like him. He is definitely an institution in himself.

Your toughest challenge.
It is very hard to please him. He is very specific about what he wants and knows exactly how it should be done. But because of his perfectionist behaviour, everyone pushed themselves to be better.

How did you spend your time when not working on the film?
We spent our time working on our personal designs for the brand. We have the couture week and Autumn-Winter ‘17 collection to also worry about.

Another Bollywood project soon?
We are hoping to be signed on for all of Sanjay sir’s projects. It was a great opportunity to work and learn from him. We have not had enough of him!