Bhanu Athaiya often described herself simply as “a painter who came to cinema.” She carried the discipline of her art training into every film she worked on, treating costume as an extension of character. Actresses who worked with her — from Waheeda Rehman to Zeenat Aman — remembered how she would sit with them, discuss each scene, and ensure that they felt completely at ease. Rekha called her “a mentor, creative guide, and friend,” while Meena Kumari’s first words to her on the set of Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam were, “Bhanu, take care of me.” That instinct — to listen, to understand, and to protect — defined her feminist practice.
Kolhapur: Shaping Sensibilities
Athaiya’s artistic sensibility was shaped in Kolhapur, a princely town with a deep cultural and theatrical tradition. Its folk and classical performances — from Tamasha to devotional plays — placed women at the heart of narrative. Growing up amid these forms, she saw femininity as expressive, not ornamental. Kolhapur’s egalitarian, multicultural environment, its painters, and its early film studios provided her with an understanding that art and design could coexist. That costume could convey emotion as much as image (Gayatri Sinha, 2022 YouTube Discussion).
Lady in Repose: The Artist’s Eye
Bhanu Athaiya, Lady in Repose, 1951, Oil on canvas
Before cinema, Athaiya had already defined her visual language through Lady in Repose, painted at the age of twenty-one. The work earned her the Gold Medal at J. J. School and marked her emergence as an artist of exceptional confidence.
Art critic Ranjit Hoskote observes that Lady in Repose “shows no reticence — it challenges the viewer, even the male gaze… there’s confidence, robustness, and mastery” (Prinseps, 2024). The reclining woman is not a passive subject but a self-possessed presence, meeting the viewer’s eye.
Rather than obeying the naturalism of academic life study, Athaiya flattened perspective and infused the surface with colour and rhythm, merging realism and expressionism. The painting signalled an early refusal to treat the female body as a spectacle. It was an image of authorship — a woman painting another woman, confident in her own form.
Athaiya was also the only woman to exhibit with the Progressive Artists’ Group, alongside M. F. Husain, F. N. Souza, and S. H. Raza, placing her within the same post-Independence modernist current that shaped India’s visual identity (Gayatri Sinha, Realizing a Dream, 2022).
From Canvas to Costume
While still a student, Athaiya joined Eve’s Weekly as a fashion illustrator — a rare position for a woman in 1950s Bombay. The magazine became her bridge from art to cinema.
Bhanu Athaiya’s intricate sketches graced the pages of the renowned women’s magazine Eve’s Weekly, which made its debut in the late 1940s. As a versatile fashion illustrator, she unveiled trends that resonated with the modern Indian woman, transforming clothing from mere necessity into a form of self-expression. Her large-sized fashion illustrations, featured every Saturday across two pages, made her a familiar name in Bombay’s creative circles. This period marked a pivotal turn in her career — she was not only shaping the image of the contemporary Indian woman in print but preparing to translate that sensibility to the screen.
Actors who saw her illustrations approached her to design their on-screen costumes. “I never chased the movies,” she later said. “The movies came to me” (Eastern Eye, 2020).
It was not a departure from art but a change of medium. She began to paint women not on paper, but in fabric, form, and movement — extending her visual philosophy from the canvas to the camera.
“Take Care of Me”: Collaboration and Care
Athaiya’s practice was defined by collaboration and empathy. Recalling her first meeting with Meena Kumari during Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (1962), she remembered receiving a rose and hearing the words, “Bhanu, take care of me” (Athaiya interview transcript, Prinseps Archive).
That exchange framed her approach: she designed not for effect, but for the woman herself. She listened to the actor, the script, and the moment. “That meeting itself inspired me to do everything I wanted to do for the heroine,” she said.
Her studio was a space where women could speak openly and move freely — a rare environment in a film industry where creative authority was largely male (Mita Vashisht, 2024 interview).
Texture and Tone: Painting Women into Narrative
Meena Kumari in Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam
Athaiya often said she worked “as a painter.” Designing for black-and-white cinema required translating colour into tone and texture. For Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, she created three visual idioms: the Brahmo Samaj girl in austere weaves, the courtesan in layered ornament, and Meena Kumari’s Chhoti Bahu in resplendent weaves that reflected both splendour and constraint. She explained, “To translate everything in shades of black and white was an experience by itself. I inserted a few colours here and there, knowing the tonality they would create on the screen.” (Athaiya interview transcript, Prinseps Archive). Her control of fabric, tone, and line gave the costume a narrative role equal to camera and dialogue.
Research as Respect
Waheeda Rehman in Reshma aur Shera, 1971
For Reshma aur Shera (1971), Athaiya lived in desert tents with the crew, studying how Rajasthani women veiled themselves: “You hold the veil with two fingers, to cover your face” (Waheeda Rehman interview, 2024). Such details were ethnographic rather than ornamental. To her, authenticity was a form of respect — toward the community, the craft, and the performer wearing it.
This respect for craft also connected Bhanu to a larger generation of women who viewed design as a form of cultural renewal. Among them was Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, whose revival of Indian handloom profoundly shaped Bhanu’s approach to cinema.
Material Intelligence
Athaiya’s innovations were practical as much as aesthetic. She introduced stitched nauvaris, zip-up saris, and stretchable churidars that allowed actresses to move with ease (Waheeda Rehman interview, 2024; Zeenat Aman discussion, Prinseps, 2024). She created asymmetrical hemlines and designed pre-draped costumes for complex choreography. Each innovation was rooted in empathy. She understood that comfort was a condition of confidence — that freedom of movement was integral to the dignity of performance.
Vyjayanthimala and Dilip Kumar in Ganga Jamuna (1961)
She brought handloom into mainstream cinema for the first time in Ganga Jamuna (1961), using authentic Indian weaves and natural dyes to reflect the lived textures of rural women’s lives. “For the first time, actual Indian handlooms and handicrafts were used to make the costumes,” she wrote. This commitment to indigenous textiles aligned her with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s handloom revival — another movement led by women who saw craft as both cultural and creative empowerment.
Rekha in Muquaddar ka Sikandar (1978)
One of her favourite materials was chiffon — a fabric she described as “one of the strongest, though it appears delicate.” To her, its dual nature mirrored the women she dressed: resilient beneath grace, expressive yet controlled. Rekha recalled how Bhanu used chiffon in Do Anjaane and Muqaddar ka Sikandar to convey sensuality without excess — clothes that moved like breath yet held their form.
Through handloom and chiffon alike, Athaiya expressed a feminism rooted in respect for women’s bodies, labour, and lived experience.
Liberation in Motion
Waheeda Rehman in Guide (1965)
Her feminist insight found its most visible form in cinematic transformation. In Guide (1965), Waheeda Rehman’s evolution from a confined wife to an independent dancer unfolds through changing silhouettes and fabrics.
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Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978)
In Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), Zeenat Aman and Athaiya worked together to balance sensuality with self-possession. “None of my costumes looked crass,” Aman recalled. “Especially something made by Bhanu” (Zeenat Aman, Prinseps discussion, 2024). Through such dialogue, Athaiya reclaimed sensuality as composure, not display. She didn’t design for the gaze; she designed for the woman in the frame.
The Feminist Studio
Athaiya’s studio functioned as an atelier of collaboration. She tested costumes herself, ensuring that actors could move, sit, and perform comfortably (Mita Vashisht, 2024). Tailors, embroiderers, and assistants worked in quiet rhythm under her direction. She rarely raised her voice, yet her authority was absolute.
She once said, “I am a director’s designer” (Eastern Eye, 2020). But her loyalty to the director’s vision never meant subordination. It meant dialogue — a shared pursuit of truth through design. Her feminism lay in this process: respect, precision, and the conviction that every woman deserved ease on screen.
The Global Stage: Gandhi
Her Oscar-winning work for Gandhi (1982) brought these principles to an international scale. She dressed thousands of extras, reconstructing five decades of Indian history through fabric and silhouette. Each community, caste, and region was represented through careful research — from the turban of a peasant to the embroidery of Kasturba’s sari (Radhika Gupta, 2024 Prinseps panel).
When she returned the Oscar to the Academy years later, she said simply, “The work itself was the reward” (Eastern Eye, 2020). It was a gesture consistent with her life — disciplined, ethical, and self-contained.
Women of History, Women of Imagination
This vision later extended beyond film into her designs for the Advani-Oerlikon calendars of the 1980s and 1990s. The 1994 edition, Who Says It’s a Man’s World, portrayed Rishikas, Brahmavadinis, and women of power drawn from Indian history and mythology. Each was treated not as a muse but as a thinker, warrior, or leader. The 1990 edition, themed on heroines who “put death before dishonour,” presented historical and mythological women through a lens of integrity rather than tragedy. Every costume was researched, drawn, and constructed with the precision of a painter’s hand (Prinseps Archive, 2024). These works reaffirmed her conviction that representation could restore women to the centre of visual history.
A Feminist Vision by Design
“At the beginning of her career, it would have been difficult to attribute to her a cultural plan. But as she went from film to film, from year to year, from decade to decade, Bhanu Athaiya created typologies of female beauty that struck a resounding chord with the great Indian masses. At the same time, cinema brought her to the masses, even as it allowed her to maintain her well-known reclusiveness.”
— Gayatri Sinha, Realizing a Dream, 2022
Across art and cinema, Athaiya redefined costume as a language of empathy and intellect. She gave her actresses comfort, credibility, and presence, ensuring that their image on screen carried their strength, not their submission.
Her legacy lies not only in the costumes that survive but in the women she helped frame — seen, complex, and wholly themselves.
