Anaita Shroff Adajania comes alive on set. There is always something happening around her: a moodboard propped up in front of the shooting area, jewellery spread out, a celebrity asking a question, a photographer wanting to try something different. She might be adding a jacket to one outfit or a bag to another, while an assistant trails behind her, reading out an email or discussing what she should wear to an event later that week.
It is an appropriately restless picture of someone who has spent much of her life at the intersection of fashion, film and popular culture. But what is perhaps most striking about being around her is how instinctive the whole process feels.
Over the years, the fashion and costume stylist, lifestyle consultant and creative director, who’s worked on films such as the Dhoom franchise, Cocktail (2012), Love Aaj Kal (2009) and Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), and shows like Call Me Bae (2024), among others, has watched Bollywood’s relationship with clothes change from a largely decorative exercise into something far more deliberate.
A Touch of Madonna
“There was definitely a phase in Indian cinema when actors and costume designers would travel abroad on holidays, and simply pick up outfits they liked,” Adajania says. “Those pieces would then make their way into the film, without deep thought to the character beyond what looked good.”
Today, the question begins much earlier: Who is this person? Where did they come from? What would they choose for themselves?
She continues, “We look at the character’s personality, their background, their lifestyle, their evolution, and even their little quirks. Everything contributes to building that person on screen. The clothes, the accessories, the shoes, even the smallest details are carefully considered to make the character feel authentic and complete.”
It’s an approach that says as much about Adajania’s own eye as it does about the changing industry. After all, her references have always been expansive. Madonna was an early fixation because of the singer’s strong individual expression of fashion, but what Adajania admired most was her refusal to play by the rules, particularly the provocative mixing of innerwear and outerwear — a sensibility that many in the Hindi film industry would deem Adajania’s ‘look’ today.
She’s also inspired by the women closer to home: Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi, whose brand of glamour, sequins, sensuality, confidence, belonged to an era when being dressed up was not something to apologise for. And to that, the ’90s supermodels added another layer: a kind of global fashion fantasy that made clothes feel powerful.
There is a particularly personal quality to the way Adajania carries these references forward. When she styled supermodel Cindy Crawford for a cover, she looked back to those Indian icons. Crawford was put in “this iconic, floor-length, fitted gold sequin dress” against the blue skies of Malibu. The image brought together two worlds she had long held in her imagination.
“It felt like this sexy meeting of Indian glamour and international fashion and seeing Cindy channel that energy was such a beautiful, emotional full-circle moment for me,” she says.
But despite the supermodels, the movie stars and the fashion mythology, the most interesting people, Adajania says, are not famous at all. Her real research happens everywhere: airports, the streets and her travels.
Point of View
That might be the key to understanding her taste. She is less interested in fashion as a set of rules than in the strange, often unrepeatable way people put things together. Someone may not be conventionally fashionable and yet possess something far more compelling: an unmistakeable sense of self.
“Ultimately, the most interesting style is the style that feels completely your own,” Adajania says.
It is also why the current celebrity fashion ecosystem can sometimes leave her feeling bored. Social media has made celebrity dressing immediate and democratic; a look can be photographed, posted, dissected and replicated within hours. It has opened up access to fashion in ways that were unimaginable before. But accessibility has its downside when everyone starts looking at the same references. So much so that it can feel like a “conveyor belt” of looks, with everyone drawing from the same moodboard and the same set of samples doing the rounds.
But for someone who has spent years creating images, the problem is not repetition itself. Fashion has always been repeated and reinvented. It is the absence of personality that bothers her.
“I always remember celebrities who have a real point of view about how they look and dress. It’s that individuality and personal expression that makes style exciting,” she says.
If there is one trend in celebrity dressing she would happily see disappear, it is the tendency to make every celebration look like a wedding. Festivals, parties and weddings are increasingly collapsing into one visual category, each demanding its own version of maximum glamour.
Adajania’s solution is not to make Indian dressing less beautiful, but to make it more thoughtful. “It would be nice to bring that distinction back,” she continues. “To understand the spirit of each occasion and dress accordingly. Not every festival or event needs to feel like a wedding. There’s something lovely about being a little more considered and a little less overdressed.”
That idea of consideration is perhaps where the stylist’s view of Indian fashion becomes most interesting. For all the global references that have informed her eye, she sees the country’s greatest fashion advantage as something deeply local: its relationship with craft.
“I think, as Indians, we have such a deep appreciation for our heritage, our craft and, most importantly, the people who keep those traditions alive,” she says.
The excitement, for her, lies in watching designers take that inheritance somewhere new without stripping it of its identity. Textiles, embroidery, jewellery and regional techniques are not simply historical references; they are raw material for contemporary fashion.
And if that is the conversation happening in fashion, something similar is happening in cinema. Adajania is particularly optimistic about where costume design is going next. The shift is away from clothes that merely look good on screen and towards clothes that feel as though they belong to the person wearing them.
As she puts it: “When it’s done well, you can completely imagine that’s how the character would dress in real life.”
Because authenticity, after all, is what keeps returning throughout her thinking: in celebrity style, in costume, in craft, in the people she watches at airports, knowing when a look has stopped being a look and has become a person. On set, she may still be moving between a hundred things all at once. But underneath the chaos is a very clear belief — that style is most powerful when it has a reason to exist, and that the best-dressed person in the room is not necessarily the one wearing the latest couture. It is the one who looks the most like themselves.