The Girl With The Golden Touch

Styling Aakanksha Jain Fashion Assistants Sayanti Banerjee and Revathi Batola Make-up by Sonic Sawate, Senior Artist for M.A.C India Hair by Kanta Motwani from Kromakay Salons Production Madmoth Production Props by Ideas Props Photographs by FABIEN CHARUAU Jumpsuit, Gauri and Nainika at Ensemble.

Bracelet and ring, both Anjali Bhimrajka.

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Neckpiece and earrings, both Anjali Bhimrajka.

Focused on her Bollywood dreams. Not afraid to admit that she gets her style more wrong than right. Clear in her head that she is still learning and growing. Excitable about experimenting with her look, whether for films or for photo-shoots or for an outing with friends. Alia Bhatt glows with gorgeous confidence. There is a refreshing vulnerability on her face, and her youthful exuberance and edgy spontaneity have made her quite the darling of the silver screen. Her much-talked about acting chops only make it better. If you thought the ‘cute’ label would box her into those ‘glam-doll’ roles, with which she made her debut, she proved you wrong soon enough with a totally de-glammed performance in Highway. And her habit of calling a spade, a spade, ensures she is almost always in news. Oh yes, she is opinionated! And she is not scared to speak her mind. At all. That may have made her Bollywood’s latest controversy child, but she is beyond caring. “People are free to express their opinions about me and I am free to express mine,” she says. It is one of these opinions about a fellow actor that had her up in news lately. She was slammed by everyone, almost on every platform, for criticising Parineeti Chopra for the way she dresses, even though it was not in the bitchy zone. Ask Alia and she says nonchalantly, “I don’t regret saying it at all. It was an opinion I shared with Parineeti, too. She looks her best when she’s comfortable in what she is wearing. She is such a fabulous actor. I do feel that she can dress better.” However, Alia’s critics strongly felt that she is too young to be commenting on the style sensibilities of actors senior to her. But Alia finds it difficult to digest her age being brought into the equation. “So what if I am young? I am entitled to have an opinion,” she says. Usually strong ones, we realise during the course of our conversation. Yes, she does try to be diplomatic once in a while. She has no favourite co-stars and no dream list of actors she wishes to work with. No favourites among Varun, Siddharth, Randeep or Arjun either. Instead, she has dream directors. She would love to work with Raju Hirani and Ayan Mukherjee. She enjoyed working on all her three films and with all three directors, and does not like the idea of comparing her films as each is special to her. She loves her mom and dad equally. And there is no other actress in Bollywood who Alia feels needs a stylist. That’s diplomatic enough. But you push her a bit, just a wee bit, and the real Alia jumps up to the fore and takes centre stage, almost instantly. She considers people who bring her age into everything plain ridiculous. She just cannot hide behind facades and would rather wear her opinions about anything and anyone on her sleeve. She is open about the fact that she is never going to be open about her personal life. And the thing she loves the most about herself is the fact that she is blunt and has the courage to express what’s on her mind. Rumoured stories about her link-ups do not bother her, but people writing lies about her, especially those lying with confidence, is something she finds hard to tolerate. Her unconventional childhood has played a major role in making her who she is today. “Both my mother and father were very caring parents. But my father’s idea of upbringing was unconventional. He didn’t expect me to study all the time. He didn’t put pressure on me to excel at school. He emphasised more on instilling in us life values that would make us good human beings. That was more important than any textbook education for him and that has largely shaped me and my sister into the people that we are today,” confesses Alia. But did her father having two families upset her as a child. “Even though he had two families, he never tried to hide that from us,” she says. “He has always been honest about his life and he took care of all his responsibilities well. When we spent time together as a family, we knew we were together not because we had to but because we wanted to.”

Jacket, Anita Dongre.

Pants, Pankaj and Nidhi.

Shoes, Marni at Moon River.

Dress, Pankaj and Nidhi.

Bracelet, Roberto Cavalli “Earlier I dressed to get noticed. Now I don’t dress to get noticed, I dress for myself. And people can hate it or love it but I don’t care.”