For Sheetal Iqbal Sharma, costume design begins not with a rack of clothes, or even a sketch, but with the person. “If characters came with a wardrobe manual, it would make my job much easier!” he says with a laugh. “But unfortunately — or fortunately — they don’t.”
The visual language, says the costume designer, emerges somewhere between the character’s inner life and the world around them.
It is an approach that becomes especially interesting when one looks at the range of Sharma’s work. Manto (2018), Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022) and Sita Ramam (2022) may occupy broadly similar periods in time, but their characters could not have been dressed more differently. While Manto had honesty and restraint, Gangubai had a visual identity that could show authority and Sita had softness and romance.
Sharma does not begin by asking what a character should wear. He asks, “Who is this person, and what would feel inevitable on them?” Once he finds that answer, the clothes usually follow.
In Gangubai Kathiawadi, the answer happened to be white. The reference came from Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens of Mumbai, the source material from which Gangubai’s story was adapted. Gangubai is described as someone who predominantly wore white, and that became the starting point for Sharma and director Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
The simplicity of the idea, however, quickly became its biggest challenge. A protagonist who almost always wears white sounds easy enough, until white has to tell an entire story.
The solution was to make the colour evolve. Different shades, fabrics, embroideries, textures and drapes allowed white to shift with Gangubai. It could be vulnerable in one moment and authoritative in another; intimate at one stage and almost iconic later.
“By the end, you don’t really see Gangubai wearing white — the white itself has become inseparable from her,” Sharma says. But that kind of transformation does not happen through colour alone. For example, as Gangubai grows into her power, the seedha-pallu (straight) drape changes. So does the darker red bindi, the little gold tooth and the delicate mules. These details begin to affect the way she walks, sits, and holds herself.
“Alia absorbed these details beautifully, allowing that growing arrogance and dominance to become part of Gangubai’s posture and presence rather than something the costume needed to announce,” he says. “And there is a progression in the clothes as well. The earlier florals gradually give way to cottons, and later to silks, gold zari, embroidered borders and traditional weaves that bring a certain dignity and stature to her attire as Gangubai herself progresses. The blouses evolve, the detailing becomes richer — even something as small as the buttons was considered; her buttons were done in gold.”
With Manto, Sharma focused on ageing the clothes. Manto, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, is a writer and an observer who was constantly absorbing and responding to the world around him. So, his clothes could never feel too considered or designed. There had to be honesty and an ordinariness to them.
Director Nandita Das was particular about authenticity. She had built an extensive library of references, including photographs from Manto’s life, while anecdotes and personal details gathered through conversations with his daughters and visits to Pakistan helped fill in the man behind those images.
Then there was the history surrounding him. Partition was not simply a detail in Manto’s story; it was something he carried within him. The period had to be present in the fabrics, silhouettes, tailoring, wear and tear, and repetition of clothes rather than through anything decorative.
Sharma says, “Manto himself needed a certain restraint. His mind was provocative; his clothes didn’t need to be. The simplicity of the man on the outside, the complexity of everything he was observing and writing about on the inside — and somewhere, the weight of everything he had lived through.”
The clothes also had to look as though they had belonged to him for years. Sharma paid attention to the softness of a collar, the wear on a cuff or elbow, the way a pocket stretches and the subtle ageing that happens when a person repeatedly writes, smokes, sits, travels and observes in the same clothes. His clothes needed to carry evidence of that life.
“These details aren’t necessarily meant to be noticed; they are meant to be felt,” he says.
That instinct to make clothing feel lived rather than merely period-correct is also what shaped Sita Ramam. Research for the film established silhouettes, fabrics, military uniforms, jewellery, social context, and the way people dressed. For Sharma, Sita Ramam needed to feel like a memory: truthful to its time, but slightly more beautiful in the way we tend to remember the past. For Sita, played by Mrunal Thakur, that meant old-world charm, grace and romance. Lace and crochet, translucent tissue, rich silks and flowing chiffons gave her wardrobe a delicacy that also suggested the refinement and privilege of her world. Sharma found it in the details of her blouses: collars, puffed sleeves, Peter Pan collars and small construction details that suggested the colonial influence of the period.
Dulquer Salmaan’s Ram was different. His world was about simplicity, discipline and the life of a common man of that era. His military background gave his clothing structure, but emotionally he was an orphan longing for love. Sharma, therefore, wanted to retain a little boyish charm in him; something warm and immediately likeable. That contrast between the two is crucial, and their costumes tell us that before their love story does.
If Sita Ramam called for romance and Manto required realism, Saiyaara (2025) demanded something more contemporary: the lost art of looking fashionable without looking styled.
For Sharma, that meant looking at the young people around him. Gen Z, he points out with a laugh, already has enough to deal with — their clothes do not need to add to the drama. “They’re not necessarily dressing to impress; they’re dressing to feel like themselves. That became an important starting point for us,” he says.
Vaani’s wardrobe was built around that idea. Sharma sourced batiks, block prints, simple cottons and naturally dyed fabrics, then had the kurtas tailor-made for Aneet Padda. Absolutely nothing was bought as a ready-made “look”.
But Vaani’s most revealing layers are not in her clothes, he explains: “Her diary, for instance, isn’t there because she’s making to-do lists. She’s always seeking something beautiful to hold on to, and poetry, music, musical notes and lyrics become a way for her to reconnect with memories that keep slipping away. Even the backpack, the headphones and the few little things she carries are really all she needs.”
Ahaan Panday’s Krish is the opposite. His clothes carry his restlessness, rage, ambition and aggression. He knows he has music in him, but for a long time he is creating while someone else receives the recognition. His wardrobe therefore leans into blacks, charcoals and greys, with leather and metal accessories adding raw, rock-musician energy.
But then Vaani enters and quietly starts interfering with Sharma’s colour palette. Muted peaches, pastels and softer shades begin to appear.
When she disappears, he retreats visually too. The black returns. “We never needed to announce that change; his wardrobe was simply following what was happening to him,” Sharma says. He adds that the relationship between character and clothes becomes even more complicated when the actor enters the picture. One needs to understand what they are comfortable in, what they instinctively respond to, and how they move in a garment.
But there are inevitably moments when the character wants one thing and the actor wants something else. “So, sometimes you have to gently remind everyone that we are dressing the character — not their Instagram profile,” he says with a smile.
Sharma’s relationship with clothes extends beyond the films themselves. He has a storeroom in Bhiwandi which unfortunately is not, as one might assume, a secret archive of costumes from every production he has worked on. “No, no, I’m not secretly hoarding costumes from every production I’ve worked on!” he says with a laugh.
It is his personal collection — built from things he discovers while sourcing and travelling for films. Many are pieces he knows may not be available again: handcrafted textiles, unusual weaves, remnants of dying crafts and objects with a history that extends beyond their price. Some are more personal still, heirlooms passed through generations, pieces he remembers seeing at home and even things he watched his mother weave.
The work is changing with technology too. AI has become another tool in the costume process, particularly when actors want to visualise a look before getting to the actual look test. It can communicate an idea quickly, give an actor confidence and help the designer, actor and director arrive at a common visual language.
“AI is very cooperative,” he says. “It never complains about a fitting!” But the real work starts when an idea meets an actual human being. AI can show intention, he says, but human intervention determines the character.
And that’s something Sharma learned on the sets of his first film, Miss Lovely (2012). “I was just out of college. Working with Ashim Ahluwalia, who has such a strong visual instinct, really opened up my senses. Nawazuddin Siddiqui was also relatively new then, and I think all of us were in a very exploratory space,” he reminisces.
“It was also my first real understanding of how a film set functions. It was independent cinema, budgets were constrained, but everyone was willing to stretch beyond their defined roles and do whatever they could to make the film work.”
What fascinated Sharma was how much of that world was about craft. Budgets were limited and technology was too, so things had to be made, adapted and improvised.
The designer adds, “Whether it was creating a mask or a gold tiara for Miss Lovely, or much later working on crowns and accessories for emperors in large-scale period films, the principle remained surprisingly similar. You don’t always need to find the perfectly manufactured object. If you understand the craft, the material and the aesthetic of the world you’re creating, you can build it yourself — and sometimes that imperfection gives it much more character.”
After all, aren’t the best costumes the ones that make you believe the character was already living in those clothes long before the camera arrived?
“Initially, the visual approach for Raees (2017) was more documentary-like. We did extensive research into Ahmedabad, Baroda, and the entire world of the ’70s and ’80s. I travelled, photographed people, went through family albums and built an entire visual library of how people from that milieu actually dressed. Then, I landed up in a studio for a look test with the magnificent Shah Rukh Khan. He came in and tried everything that had been laid out as per the director’s brief.
Then he turned around and asked me: ‘Do you have something that can make me relate more to a Pathaan?’
Of course, I did! I had an entire array of Pathaani looks ready for him, which hadn’t made it into the selection for the look test. Then came the smaller details — the surma, the glasses, the watch. Together they gave Raees an identity. What I’m grateful for is that the audience noticed them. That experience taught me to trust instinct, even when it hasn’t found its moment yet. And I guess sometimes it takes a little SRK magic to do that.”