Glamour comes from who you are: Katrina Kaif at Mumbai Film Festival

The final panel at the 18th MAMI Mumbai Film Festival was a fun-filled talk on Hindi cinema and fashion attended by actress Katrina Kaif and fashion designers Prabal Gurung and Christian Louboutin. The discussion was moderated by filmmaker Karan Johar, where an audience member asked Kaif when she was going to go down the deglamourised route to gain more recognition or even for awards.

Kaif answered by saying, “Sometimes the stereotype or an image which the audience gets captured in their mind, sometimes that can stick with you. But actually if we talk about a deglamourised role, neither is a glamorous or deglamorous role, for me there’s just a role. I can’t change the way I look and that’s the one thing we can’t really change.”

She gave an example of Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti (2010) where she felt a bit scared about the challenge. “Up until that point, the directors I had worked with, they didn’t give so much attention to costume. I’m talking about directors like Anees Bazmee and David Dhawan where 90% of the costumes were bought by me on location. You were either going to wear something very bad or you were going to go out there yourself, buy and wore it so your character looked good. In Raajneeti, Prakash Jha himself went and bought the cotton sari which you see my character wear because he knew what he wanted. For me, that was deglamourised character. Glamour comes from who you are.”

She went on to talk about her look in the upcoming Jagga Jasoos (2017) directed by Anurag Basu. “The fashion forecast for my feature films coming up, I have to say is very simple. It’s very raw, organic material. I do know this because almost the whole outfits has been gotten from Reformation which is all recycled fabrics and environmentally friendly. But it’s very simple and basic. I think it’s beautiful.”

Jagga Jasoos, with co-star Ranbir Kapoor, will release on 7 April next year.