Being one of India’s biggest reality shows, Bigg Boss is truly a celebration. In fact, everyone who is associated with it certainly sees a huge change in their lives. Talking about Bigg Boss 16, while we all have been consumed with the contestants, there is a huge force that is behind the show and contributes to it to a great extent. Apart from a huge crew and amazing PR machinery, there is a brigade of stylists who do a fabulous job at making contestants look glamorous every weekend and throughout the three months. Recently, I spoke to Shalin Bhanot‘s stylist Deeti Mehta who told me how this entire Bigg Boss process work.
As for Deeti, she has been styling for five years now. Starting off as a jewellery designer, Deeti has worked with the best of stylists and fashion directors. In fact, she has been an art director for Zee Music videos and has styled some international celebrities in the past.
Talking about celebrities she has worked with Deeti shares,
I have had the honour for styling names like LIU Chen – Chinese U17 goalkeeper who played in the world cup held in India, Khalida Popal – Founder and captain of the Afghanistan womens football team. Vero Boquete who is now a retired Spain football player and Aubrey Bledsoe who is a US goal keeper. The most recent one is Shalin Bhanot in Bigg Boss.
Sharing if the process of styling for Bigg Boss is different, Deeti says…
Bigg Boss is not just a reality show, it’s a celebration of individuality. What you wear, showcases your personality and you are sitting amongst other celebrities and contestants, each of whom have their own choices to showcase their personalities. In Shalin’s case, he was against the idea of fitting into someone else’s creativity and hence we haven’t sourced for him. The idea was to create a wardrobe which essentially showcases Shalin and who he is. We have been creating all the outfits he’s wearing on the weekends and there is a lot of experimentation happening with colours, fabrics, prints and a palette which has immense variety throughout the season.
Deeti also speaks about the challenges she faced with styling Shalin for the show, she says…
For me Bigg Boss has been an opportunity in disguise, challenging of course, but also a massive learning experience. Having a celebrity in front of you and them making their choices according to their mood is so much easier than sending clothes as per what one feels will be liked by their talent. Each week there is a different mood, there is a different side of personality that he showcases, so that’s the challenge. We aren’t working much in advance because with each given day there’s a change in the game and hence we are trying to be in sync with the game which requires time bound execution. The great blessing here has been that Shalin has the personality to carry off everything with so much panache.
She further adds,
It has definitely not been easy and there have been days when we are left wondering why did he wear something the way he did. But in retrosecpt we have had a fabulous graph. The great thing is he didn’t want to fit the box and he left me with all the liberty to create whatever I wanted to and hence creativity had no limits. And that is being noticed because so many celebrities have been reaching out wanting to have their clothes custom designed and created after seeing the efforts with Shalin.
Well, I have to say even Salman Khan has lauded some of Shalin’s outfits and the credit for all of it goes to Deeti. Having said that here’s wishing her all the very best in all her future endeavors.