From Alia Bhatt to Gigi Hadid, meet the stylist who helps stars slip into saris

Before Bollywood stars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh tied the knot in Lake Como in 2018, Kolkata-based drape artist Dolly Jain secretly set off for the dreamy Italian city for work. But just three days before leaving, she’d revealed details of her latest assignment to her family and her two daughters were excited. “I told my kids that they can’t tell anyone. You know how kids are. They’ll say, ‘I only told my best friend, Mama’ and then the whole world will come to know the next day,” she laughs. Media coverage of the very private wedding had reached a fever pitch by then and a few details were already revealed but Dolly remained tight-lipped. “Only once we reached Lake Como did I even tell my team that we were there for Deepika Padukone’s wedding,” she says.

Dolly has draped saris on several A-list celebrities across industries — from Gigi Hadid, Alia Bhatt and Katrina Kaif, to the Ambanis. She has helped Indian celebrities slip into a sari at prestigious international events like the Met Gala and Cannes Film Festival, and worked on stars at their weddings, films and promotions — the most recent being the promotion for Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.

From Bengaluru to Bollywood

Dolly’s own love story with saris, however, didn’t have the perfect beginning. Years before this steady stream of high-profile clients, she started out by draping a sari around her doll. “When I was 10 or 12 years old, my mother had once come back from a party, and she kept her sari on the bed. I had to drape my doll in a piece of fabric and as I didn’t have one, I immediately took the scissors and cut a small piece of fabric from her sari. The next time she wore it, she realised that the palla was short and asked, ‘You cut my sari for a doll!’” she laughs.

Dolly herself, though, never wore saris. Born and raised in Bengaluru, she rarely got out of her comfortable jeans and T-shirts. Due to certain circumstances — which she declines to discuss — Dolly had to cut short her education after Grade 7. “That time, I felt very unhappy because I felt like I would not be able to do anything else in my life.”

The first time she wore a sari was at 21, when her husband met her as a prospective groom. They got married soon after. “I got married into an orthodox family and I thought, ‘Okay, I just have to be a good daughter-in-law and wife, raise my children, get them married and then raise their children’. That was it.” She could predict the next 50 years of her life which, at 21, is never a comforting thought. “But in my heart, I knew that I was blessed with a talent — although I didn’t even know what that talent was yet.”

Her mother-in-law insisted that she wear a sari every day. “So, I used to wake up at 4:30am to drape a sari as it used to take me 45 minutes to an hour to do so. And I hated wasting one hour of my time draping my saris.”

But residents of her housing complex soon noticed the young woman who effortlessly carried herself in elegant saris. One day, the mother of a soon-to-be bride called her up, asking whether she could teach her girls how to wear a sari. “I agreed because I wasn’t doing much. But it wasn’t until I taught them that I realised that I know so many different styles of tying a sari. It all just came out and soon, I fell in love with the sari.” Later, one of the girls she taught asked her to conduct a workshop at a finishing school. “A lady, whose son was getting married at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, was also there and she later asked me whether I could drape saris for the girls in their family. It was a big-scale, high profile wedding. From there, I got another wedding and it just started.” Besides the sari, Dolly is also particular about fixing the bride’s jewellery herself, sometimes using glue and thread. “I like the jewellery sitting on the body rather than on the fabric. If you are wearing many chains, I sometimes stitch the whole chain to your sari so that it doesn’t move around and you get that picture-perfect look,” explains Dolly, who charges Rs200,000 per event.

One day, fashion designer Sandeep Khosla noticed her work at a wedding where she helped the bride carry a forbiddingly long and heavy dupatta by pinning it on her head. “I just divided the weight of the dupatta,” explains Dolly. “Sandeep Khosla saw me doing it and we exchanged numbers.” And that encounter paved the way to Bollywood.