Fashioning Bollywood The Making and Meaning of Hindi Film Costume

The Hindi film industry, among the most prolific in the world, has delighted audiences for decades with its colourful, exquisite and sometimes startling costumes. But are costumes more than just a source of pleasure? This book, the first in-depth exploration of Hindi film costume, contends that they are a unique source of knowledge about issues ranging from Indian taste and fashion to questions of identity, gender and work. Anthropological and film studies approaches combine to analyze costume as the outcome of production processes and as a cinematic device for conveying meaning. Chapters lead from the places where costume is planned and executed to detailed analyses of men and women's costumes, to the imagining of historical or fantasy worlds through clothes, to the power of stardom to launch clothing styles into the public domain. As well as charting the course of film costume as it parallels important trends in cultural history, the book questions the future of Hindi film costume, in the context of new strains of filmmaking that stress unvarnished realism. Fashioning Bollywoodwill appeal to students and scholars of Indian culture, anthropology and fashion, as well as anyone who has seen and enjoyed Hindi films.

Clare Wilkinson-Weber is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Washington State University, Vancouver, Canada.

Introduction
Chapter 1: The People and Places of Costume Production
Chapter 2: Costume and Character: Wearing and Being
Chapter 3: Costume and the Body
Chapter 4: Fashion and Spectacle
Chapter 5: Dressing the Past
Chapter 6: Beyond the Screen
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Index