When Alia Bhatt married Ranbir Kapoor in 2022, it was effectively Bollywood’s answer to a royal wedding – and every aspect of the bride’s elaborate looks was pored over by fans. It seems the actor is keen to ensure the spectacular pieces she wore get more than one moment in the sun. Last year, she repurposed her Sabyasachi wedding sari and wore it to an awards ceremony.
And now, to attend designer Manish Malhotra’s Diwali party, she gave the pink patchwork lehenga he created for her Mehndi ceremony a second outing. “Recycled the up-cycled,” stylist Ami Patel said on Instagram, alluding to the approximately 180 textile patches, block prints, and intricately embroidered swathes of fabric that originally went into crafting this custom Manish Malhotra look, which was already a lesson in circular fashion. The result of 3,000 hours of dedicated labour by Mijwan women, the lehenga incorporates inimitable chikankari and Kashmiri embroidery.
Instead of crafting a garment from scratch and sourcing specific fabrics, the lehenga incorporated a variety of textiles: bandhani, banarasi brocade, jacquard and Kaccha resham knots. Elements of Bhatt’s existing pieces were also woven into the lehenga, giving it a bohemian appeal. The coins and specks of tassels give the garment texture and richness, representing Bhatt’s taste, but also skills drawn from different corners of India.
Reworking the piece two years later, Bhatt swapped the loose beachy tresses she chose for her weddin.