Cinemaazi remembers Bhanu Athaiya on her birth anniversary

Bhanu Athaiya began her career in costume design in 1953. Over the next five decades, she built a body of work that defined the aesthetics of costume design in Hindi cinema, often setting fashion trends in the 1960s and the 1970s. Her association with films started when the actress Kamini Kaushal signed her on as a personal costume designer in the early 1950s. 
Bhanu Athaiya was the hand behind iconic looks like Waheeda Rehman’s in Guide (1965), Mumtaz’s clothes in Brahmachari (1968), Zeenat Aman’s in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) and Sadhana’s costumes in Waqt (1965). She has worked with directors and producers of repute, including Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, B.R. Chopra, Yash Chopra, F.C. Mehra, Sunil Dutt, Dev Anand and Ashutosh Gowariker. From black-and-white cinema to the age of Technicolor, Bhanu has stunned with her designs in films ranging from Sangam (1964) and Gunga Jamuna (1961) to contemporary works like Lagaan (2001) and Swades (2004). 

With her work in the English language Gandhi (1982), Bhanu Athaiya won an Academy Award, the first Indian to be honoured with the same.