WHEN CINEMA MEETS COUTURE

Designing for cinema demanded a sensitivity that balanced history with imagination

- By Rimple & Harpreet Narula

OUR JOURNEY with fashion has always been less about trends and more about memory — the kind that lingers in the folds of an heirloom dupatta or the faint scent of attar clinging to an old silk sari. Growing up, we were surrounded by women whose style felt effortless yet profound. Our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts would assemble their looks with a certain poetry; draping chiffons with quiet grace, adorning themselves with inherited jewels, and carrying a sense of dignity that spoke of another time. Those early impressions became our first lessons in aesthetics — that true style is not created; it is remembered.

As we began shaping our own design language, our fascination with the past turned into a form of study. We found ourselves seeking history not in textbooks, but in textures - in antique markets, museum archives, and private collections across India and abroad. Over the years, we've spent long afternoons at institutions like the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, and smaller textile museums in Jaipur and Benaras, studying fragments of brocades, miniature paintings, and old manuscripts. Often, these artifacts offered only glimpses — a torn page from a 17th Century illustrated folio, the fading border of a royal costume, or an old book cover with Persian calligraphy. Yet, each fragment became a clue, a thread that helped us reimagine the forgotten grandeur of India's material culture.