Wanted Saif to relive ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ days: Shantanu-Nikhil

Team Udayavani, Feb 4, 2018, 5:00 PM IST

Mumbai: Designer duo Shantanu-Nikhil said they tried to dress up Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan in a way where he gets to travel back to the days of his film “Dil Chahta Hai”. The actor walked the ramp for the renowned designer duo at the Lakme Fashion Week Summer/Resort 2018 yesterday.

Shantanu said they tried to show the new India from the eyes of a millennial, quite like Saif’s character, Sameer, from the cult coming-of-age film. “With this collection, we took him back to nostalgia. We tried to take Saif back to his ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ days, when he was living life like a millennial,” he told the reporters at the press conference of the show.

The “Kaalakaandi” actor said he was excited to be back on the ramp and that actor wife Kareena Kapoor Khan would be “quite surprised to know that she’s not the only one who’s going to be walking”. Kareena is the showstopper for Anamika Khanna’s grand finale of the fashion extravaganza.

“This was a last minute thing but I was so excited. It’s a look in the past and also a look into the future. A good thing about our lives, heritage, clothes. They are simple clothes. Ostentatiousness is out, austerity is in,” Saif added. The show was spread across the black and white hues with sharp tailoring and dramatic accents.

The jewellery was incorporated in the clothes – they did not serve as just another accessory. ‘Tribe: The India Story’ caters to both women and men and Shantanu said the collection is a narration of the Indian philosophy of “valour and egalitarianism”.

“‘Tribe…’ literally from the fashion perspective, was the representation of the new-age millennials who are culturally bound together… It was like going back into nostalgia. The collection had a Nehruvian feel to it,” he said.

Interestingly, the last show of day four at LFW ended with a strong message of “representation of equality, with some hints of androgyny”. Towards the end, Saif tucked a medal-like silver accessory to the female model’s shirt, which appeared to symbolise the transfer of command from one head to another.

“What you saw was ‘he is she’ and ‘she is she’, the equal importance of male and female forms,” Shantanu said. The LFW closes today.