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Emma Watson’s Outfits For ‘Beauty And The Beast’ Were Made In India. That’s Right!

bySaurabh Pandey
21st March 2017
2 minute read

‘Beauty and the Beast’ is earning accolades worldwide for the beautiful portrayal of the epic. The age-old fairy tale takes you to a magical land full of dreams and opulence. While everyone is busy praising Emma Watson and Dan Stevens for their performances and Disney for its beautiful storytelling, there is an Indian element that has brought the ‘beauty’ in the movie.

Sinéad O’Sullivan, the assistant costume designer of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ revealed that Belle’s hand-crafted bodice in the movie was designed using the ‘Aari work’ technique by two Gujarati brothers, Kasam and Juma.

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O’Sullivan took to Instagram to share the picture of the work from Kutch region of Gujarat along with details of the design.

The post reads:

Belle’s bodice from Beauty and the beast was beautifully hand embroidered by artisan brothers Kasam and Juma in Bhuj, Northern India. They used a technique called “Aari work” which is a very fine chain stitch traditional to the Kutch area of Gujarat. This style lent itself very nicely to this eighteenth century French floral design.

 

The designer shared another picture of Belle’s costumes which was crafted using fabrics sourced from India. 

View this post on Instagram

@beautyandthebeast is out today! I was an assistant designer to Jacqueline Durran on the job, which had a costume team of almost 100 people. As a team, we tried to source ethical, fair-trade and sustainable fabrics wherever possible. For Belle's "red cape look" in particular we decided to challenge ourselves to see how difficult it would be to create a costume that was head to toe fair-trade, organic and sustainable, but which didn’t compromise Jacqueline's design. We contacted Eco Age, who provided us with a set of criteria which we could adhere to. All of the production was done in our in-house workshops, and the whole costume team got involved in the challenge. This specific costume required 12 different fabrics to make her cape, jacket, blouse, bodice, skirts and bloomers, with trims and ties, and we ensured that each element was certified organic and fair-trade. Our dyeing team took on the challenge of using natural and low impact dyes, and printing with traditional wood blocks, which the set carpenters helped make in the construction department, from redundant bits of the set. Some of the fabrics and trims used were vintage, including the cape which was made from hand-woven Scottish Jacob’s wool, that was then over-dyed using madder. The fabric for the jacket was made using a hand-woven linen found on E-bay, which was actually a lady in manchester’s school project from the 1960’s. Her apron was hand painted by London based artist Oliver Kilby @oliverkilbyart who also painted some of Belle's other accessories. The rest of the fabrics were sourced from fairtrade co-operatives in India and Nepal. #whomademyclothes #whomademycostume #ethicalcostume #ootd #jacquelinedurran #fairtrade #behindthescenes #beautyandthebeast #artisan #organic #naturaldyes #vintage #disney #sustainable @beautyandthebeast #thecostumedirectory

A post shared by Sinéad Kidao (O’Sullivan) (@thecostumedirectory) on

While O’Sullivan made a little Geographical mistake of putting Kutch in Northern India (it’s not that big a deal really), her post sure gives a sense of pride to every Indian.

It is also important that we encourage artisans who are keeping such traditional artwork alive in the nation so that they get more recognition and respect worldwide and earn good money for their craft.

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