The Hollywood Reporter India’s new list of 25 film looks that crossed into popular culture is best read as an argument about memory: some costumes do not end with the credits. They reappear at farewells, on barbershop walls and in tailoring requests, and over time they become shorthand for a decade.
For Hindi cinema, the list is a reminder that styling often did more than dialogue to fix a character in the public mind. From Salman Khan’s centre parting in Tere Naam to the backless “Desi Girl” sari in Dostana, the selection spans six decades and five industries, but the Hindi entries carry a particular weight because they became mass-market instructions rather than studio references.
Accident, adoption, aftermath
One of the most revealing stories in the list is that Aamir Khan’s soul patch in Dil Chahta Hai began as a shaving accident. The look became a marker of the early-2000s urban yuppie, even as many men called it a goatee and confused their barbers. Saif Ali Khan’s panel joke about “licking the triangle” is quoted in the piece, but the larger point is that a small grooming choice turned into an identity.
Salman Khan’s exaggerated centre parting in Tere Naam worked the same way at ground level. In tier-2 and tier-3 towns, college boys copied the fringe and risked detentions to keep it. A film look reaches a different status when it produces a barbershop queue and a school reprimand.
The Hindi catalogue
The list is not a costume-design history so much as a history of adoption. Among the Hindi looks it records:
- Jab We Met — Geet’s graphic Mughal-e-Azam T-shirt, blue camisole and patiala salwar became a street staple and a Bollywood-party costume.
- Dostana — Manish Malhotra’s silver-gold, backless “Desi Girl” sari made the six yards look bold and modern, and it is still danced to at sangeets.
- Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani — Alia Bhatt’s chiffon saris, styled by Malhotra to look worn-in rather than red-carpet-ready, produced a surge in requests for “the Alia sari”.
- Ae Dil Hai Mushkil — Alizeh’s embellished high-slit kurta with ripped jeans and boots created a kurta-and-denim category that did not need a wedding to justify it.
- Bunty Aur Babli — Rani Mukerji’s short kurti and patiala salwar read as small-town aspiration, and local tailors could copy it.
- Dabangg — Chulbul Pandey’s gold-rimmed aviators parked on the back collar came with a logic that stuck: “So I can see in both directions.”
The list also treats Jodhaa Akbar’s jewellery as a production and retail event. The pieces were made with about 400 kg of gold, semi-precious stones and pearls by 200 craftsmen over 600 days, and the set Aishwarya Rai Bachchan wore in the wedding scene weighed 3.5 kg. Tanishq later put three pieces from the film into a range for sale.
Why it matters now
For an audience that follows Hindi cinema closely, the value of this list is the direction of influence. In several entries, cinema did not reflect fashion; it set the terms. That is a useful lens for reading current releases, where a costume may be part of a film’s announcement but not necessarily its afterlife.
Manish Malhotra’s description of the response to Rocky Aur Rani as “aftermath satisfaction” is the right metric. A look has crossed over when audiences are recreating it frame by frame at home, not just photographing it on a red carpet.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter India
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