For a lot of us who grew up fascinated by fashion, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion was one of the first movies that made us want to be a part of a world we’ve only ever seen from the outside. When it released in 2008, the film offered a glimpse into an industry that, until then, most of us knew through glossy magazine pages, designer labels, fashion shows and photographs of impossibly glamorous models. Suddenly, there was a story behind all of it. There were people, ambitions, rivalries, relationships and an entire world operating beyond what the audience got to see.
I don’t think I was alone in becoming a little obsessed with the fashion industry after watching this film. The idea of Mumbai as a city where young girls arrived with big dreams, where designers had the power to make or break careers, and where a walk down the runway could change someone’s life was fascinating. The clothes were beautiful, the fashion shows looked incredible, and the backstage scenes made the whole business seem even more exciting (When I covered my first runway shows, I remember feeling as though I had stepped right into the world of the movie). Some of us dreamt of walking the runway to the tune of ‘Marjaavaan’, while others imagined sitting front row, sizing up every look as the models walked by. For someone who loved fashion, it was difficult not to be drawn in.
18 years later, with a much closer understanding of the industry, I find myself looking at the film differently. What once seemed like an exciting glimpse into a glamorous world now feels like a reminder of how complicated that world can be. The film was built around the rise and fall of Meghna Mathur, a small-town girl from Chandigarh who moves to Mumbai with dreams of becoming a supermodel. Her journey takes her through the highs of recognition, the compromises that come with ambition and the consequences of losing sight of herself along the way. Around her, we meet other women whose lives are shaped by the same industry, albeit in very different ways.
What Fashion understood particularly well was the gap between the image of the industry and the people who make it work. A fashion show may last a few minutes, but there are weeks of preparation, endless fittings, last-minute changes, demanding schedules and an entire team working behind the scenes. A model’s career can be shaped by a casting decision, a designer’s preference or a single opportunity. There is competition, there is rejection, and there is the constant pressure to stay relevant in an industry that moves on quickly. The film brought these realities into a mainstream Hindi movie at a time when the audience was far more accustomed to seeing fashion as an extension of Bollywood glamour.
Of course, the film took dramatic liberties. Some of its situations were heightened for the screen, and its portrayal of the fashion fraternity occasionally leaned into familiar stereotypes. But the larger questions it raised about ambition, exploitation, power, body image and the price of success have stayed relevant. Even today, conversations around who gets opportunities, who has access to the right people, how women are treated at work and how quickly an industry can turn its back on someone remain important. The details of the business may have changed, but many of its pressures are recognisable.
And then there were the performances. Priyanka Chopra’s Meghna Mathur was the centre of the film, and she carried the character through an incredibly demanding arc. We watched her go from an eager newcomer, trying to find her footing, to a celebrated supermodel who begins to believe that success can excuse almost anything. The transformation was convincing because Chopra allowed Meghna to be ambitious, vulnerable, difficult and flawed. She made her choices, and their consequences, equally compelling. The scenes in which Meghna begins to lose control of her life are especially memorable because they mark such a sharp departure from the woman we first meet. It remains one of the most defining performances of Chopra’s career, and the National Film Award and Filmfare Award for Best Actress that followed were well deserved.
But if Meghna was the face of the film, Kangana Ranaut’s Shonali Gujral was the character who stayed with me. She is, for most of us, the favourite part of the film. Shonali is introduced as the supermodel everyone wants to be, someone whose presence commands attention the moment she enters a room. She has the walk, the recognition, the designer associations and the kind of confidence that comes from knowing she is at the top of her game. Yet, as the film progresses, we see how precarious that position is. The industry that once celebrated her begins to move on, and she struggles to deal with the idea of becoming replaceable.
Ranaut played Shonali with an unpredictability that made the character difficult to look away from. There was an almost effortless arrogance to her in the beginning, followed by an increasingly heartbreaking vulnerability as her life unravelled. She made Shonali complicated, and even in her most difficult moments, you could understand the person behind the public image. Her performance also gave the film one of its most important observations: what happens to women in an industry that celebrates youth, appearance and novelty when they are no longer the newest face in the room? Shonali’s story was a reminder that the same world that builds someone up can be remarkably quick to forget them. Ranaut won the National Film Award and Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role, and it is easy to see why.
There is also something interesting about watching the two performances together. Meghna and Shonali represent two different points in the same cycle. One is arriving, eager to take her place; the other is watching the place she once occupied being taken over. Their stories intersect in ways that make you question what success really looks like and how much of it is ever within a person’s control. Both actresses understood the emotional weight of their characters, and neither performance would have worked quite as well without the other.
What makes the film especially nostalgic for me is its visual world. The fashion shows, the backstage corridors, the portfolios, the castings, the model apartments and the designer studios created an entire universe that felt exciting to discover. The film featured real fashion professionals and models, which added to the sense that we were getting a peek into an actual industry. I still think about how much of my own curiosity about fashion, its people and the work that happens behind the scenes can be traced back to films like this. It made the industry look like a place where you could build a career out of an interest in clothes, creativity and culture. And, for someone who eventually found herself working in fashion journalism, that idea has a certain significance.
And maybe that is why revisiting Fashion after 18 years is so interesting. The film made us curious about an industry that appeared to exist behind a velvet rope. It gave us the glamour we wanted to see, while offering enough glimpses of its difficult side to make us question what went on beyond the photographs. Some parts may now feel dated, and some of its storytelling may have been exaggerated, but its central characters and the world they inhabited continue to hold our attention.
I still love the fashion-show sequences, the clothes, the drama and the sheer spectacle of it all. But I also appreciate the film for making us look beyond the final image. Perhaps that is the real reason Fashion has stayed with us. It made us fall in love with the world of fashion before we fully understood it, and gave us plenty to think about once we did.
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