Rukmini Krishnan: Dressing up the stars
Sree Ramadasu
"Nagarjuna wanted me to style his look for the film, along with the costume for Kabir, a role played by his father Akkineni Nageswara Rao. It was nice of him to have remembered me some years after Agnivarsha (which he starred in), and it was a joy designing for him."
For Ramadasu, Rukmini had to style Nagarjuna in three-four phases of life - as the young Gopanna (later called Ramadasu), Tahsildar, bhakta and for the prison scenes. She did full justice to the role. The colour palette she gave him was earthy, yet rich, without being loud, sticking to natural fabrics and colours as much as possible. "For a scene that required Nagarjuna to wear yellow, I got the fabric dyed naturally in turmeric, while others present in the scene wore chemically-dyed clothes. I was excited when I found an unbleached khadi gada shawl in a godown, which was used for the prison scenes," she says.