THE HERO - 'I wanted to experience it'

Dress rehearsal: Prosenjit tries out some of Abhishek’s outfits a day before the show. Picture by Aranya Sen

Prosenjit walked the ramp to showcase the costumes of his Saptami release Autograph, which will be screened at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival later this month. A t2 chat with the Tolly star...

How did your ramp debut go?

It was good. I enjoyed it. Abhishek (Dutta, who did the costumes for Autograph) had approached me a number of times on various occasions to walk the ramp but I never said yes. This time I agreed because it was for my film Autograph because fashion is important for Autograph. Besides, I also wanted to experience ramp walk.

Were you nervous before stepping on to the ramp?

I wasn’t nervous because I knew I wasn’t walking as a model, but as Prosenjit. I had asked Abhishek to guide me on what exactly I had to do on the ramp because I am a perfectionist.

You play a superstar in Autograph. Is there anything in common between your wardrobe and the kind of clothes your character wears?

Yes, most of the clothes that Arun Chatterjee, my character, wears are similar to what I wear in real life. I am usually in jeans and T-shirts and Arun wears the same. I wear suits when I am attending a social do and Arun wears bandhgala suits. I wear track pants at home, Arun does the same.... But see, there has to be some difference between cinema and real life. So that way, Arun is 80 per cent Prosenjit. He sports flashier clothes than I do.

Off screen, what kind of clothes make up your style statement?

What I prefer most is teaming a bandhgala jacket with denims. The other kind of clothes I am wearing a lot of late are Bangla shirts. These are collared shirts with slits on both sides and look very smart. They are called Bangla shirts because Uttam Kumar, Biswajit (Chatterjee) and Hemanta (Mukhopadhyay) wore them a lot and made them famous. You see any old Bengali film and you will find the hero wearing these shirts with a dhuti. Even Tapas (Pal) and I have worn them in our earlier films. I have got these Bangla shirts made in bulk! And I love wearing dhuti.

What do you like to wear at home?

At home, I like to wear something loose so that I can comfortably squat on the floor. So, I usually go for knee-length track pants and T-shirts.

Who, according to you, is the best-dressed hero in Tolly now?

All of them are very good. But they dress alike and almost look the same! See, nowadays Tollywood heroes follow the latest trends. They wear what is in fashion. Whenever I see a young guy on the street, from a distance it looks like as if a hero is walking down. Everyone is so conscious nowadays and everyone is well-dressed. There are no trend-setters now. Stars wear casual clothes nowadays. In the promotional song of Dui Prithibi, you will notice that Dev and Jeet are wearing similar clothes and they more or less look alike too. In my time, there were no dress designers. I really fought with the producers to get a dress designer for films like Sasurbari Zindabad and Pratibad.

Abhishek Dutta on designing for Prosenjit in Autograph:

Before Autograph went on the floors, director Srijit Mukherjee and I discussed the costumes. Srijit suggested the colours and accordingly I gave Bumbada (Prosenjit) a lot of textured jackets, three-piece tuxedos and bandhgalas. His look in the film is sophisticated and not jazzy. But it’s not casual either. You can say it’s more couture.
In the flashback scenes in the film, he wears a white shirt teamed with a waistcoat. For the party sequences, I gave him textured sherwanis and jackets. The colour palette of the film changes according to the mood. For instance, Bumbada wears off-whites and beiges in the romantic scenes, charcoal grey and black in the tragic scenes and maroons in the party scenes.