George Clooney visits Yashraj studios

By: Upala KBR, Mid-Day
Friday, September 21, 2007

Bollywood is definitely going places. After George Clooney told Sameera Reddy he wanted to do a item song in Hindi (at the sidelines of the Toronto Film Festival) French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier has been talking of nothing but Bollywood when he was in India earlier this week.

He was so keen to meet a few B-Town stars that socialite Aarti Surendranath (of Kailash Picture Company) brought him to the sets of Abbas-Mustaan"s Race at Yash Raj Studios, where the cast (including Reddy, Saif Ali Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Bipasha Basu and Katrina Kaif) was shooting a video for the title song.

Fascinated

Says a unit member, “Jean-Paul was in Mumbai for a week and was fascinated by Bollywood. When he heard that a big film"s shooting was on, he insisted on meeting with the stars. Aarti Surendranath brought him to the sets and he spent a good two hours chatting with the cast.

Saif explained to him how Hindi films are shot. He asked Akshaye how it felt to work in the film industry and even played a game of chess with him. Later, Jean-Paul was so keen to watch the item number being shot, that he told the directors not to call for a break."

The girls were not left out of the action. Adds the source, “Bipasha and Katrina took Gaultier on a guided tour of the studio. He seemed fascinated by their styling courtesy Vogue"s new fashion director, Anahita Shroff. He felt the three girls looked like models."

Producer Ramesh Taurani says of the designer, “Jean-Paul was very excited. He stood for two hours seeing the song being shot and even danced like a little child when the music was on. It was a great privilege to show an esteemed person like him around my set. Jean-Paul was fascinated about everything happening around him."

However, Reddy says she missed meeting the man himself as she getting her make-up done. “I was jetlagged after my Toronto trip and caught up between takes, but I heard he was very sweet and enquired about everything on the sets. I was resting and didn"t have the energy to go and meet him. It was my loss entirely," she rues.

Jean-Paul Gaultier has long been known as the enfant terrible of French fashion. In the 1990s, he catapulted to extraordinary frame for having designed a set of conical bras for Madonna during her Blond Ambition tour.

Gaultier has also designed the wardrobe for many motion pictures, including Luc Besson"s avant garde film The Fifth Element, Pedro Almodovar"s Kika and Pierre Jeunet"s La Cite des Enfants Perdus (The City of Lost Children). Currently, he designs for three collections: his own couture and ready-to-wear lines, as well as the newly relaunched clothing line for French luxury fashion house, Hermès.