Fashion, which opens in cinemas, comes close on the heels of three high-profile fashion expos in New Delhi and Mumbai, in two weeks that have seen the country's media obsessed over post-show parties hosted by India's top designers.
Director Madhur Bhandarkar, an award-winning Bollywood filmmaker who created some of the most memorable female protagonists of Indian cinema, said he hoped to give Indians an intimate, fly-on-the-wall look into the corridors of fashion.
Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra, a former Miss World, is cast in the role of a small-town girl who harbours dreams of becoming a supermodel, but has to battle obstacles to succeed in the big, bad world of Mumbai.
"I wear 137 costumes in Fashion, and it was required as my character goes through a huge journey in one-and-a-half years. And we had a lot of montages in the film, a lot of ad commercials and of course fashion shows, which is why the requirement of costumes was so high for my character," Priyanka told in an interview.
Priyanka admits that 'Fashion' has come as a breather. "I stand by my films. And it felt really nice when Fashion opened well. All of us had worked very, very hard on the film and it feels good when people react so warmly. Madhur [Bhandarkar] is the true hero of the film," she smiles.
Throwing light on her different looks in the film, she said: "There are five changes that happen to my character in the film. When she comes from Chandigarh, she has a little bit of a small-town kind of styling, then she becomes a model... a little more polished. She then becomes very stylish and then a supermodel.
"When she loses her head, she becomes very arrogant and her make-up becomes darker and a lot more edgy. Then during her downfall, I am devoid of make- up. The resurrection portion is softer because she is scared and broken while trying to regain her self-confidence. We tried all those looks to keep different so that the character's journey looks seamless through the film."
Industry insiders agree that the film is for the most part accurate in its depiction of India's fashion fraternity.
Priyanka will be next seen in Dharma Productions' Dostana and is also shooting for films like Kaminay and What's Your Raashee.
She also has sequels to Don - The Chase Begins Again and Drona already in her kitty apart from an item number opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Billo Barber.
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