For Rick Roy, styling VIBE was less about making Kunal Kemmu and the rest of the cast look fashionable and more about creating a visual language for a world that is deliberately loud, quirky and slightly offbeat. The costume designer says the film’s aesthetic immediately clicked with his own sensibilities, making the collaboration with Kunal, who directs and stars in the comedy, particularly enjoyable.

“When I first met Kunal for it and the brief that he gave me and all the stuff that he was saying is something that I really love creating because street style, strong elements, slightly loud in terms of the clothes and bigger statement things, these are things that I love in my personal style as well. So when I got a brief for that character in his film, I was like, this is so me, I really, really want to do this film,” says Roy.

The idea was to build a highly stylized comedy without making the costumes feel disconnected from the characters. “It’s a really funny film and I have done a full-on comedy for a bit and also a very high-stylized comedy, I have to say, because the way it’s shot, the way the colour schemes are and everything, basically Kunal is very high style and I absolutely love that. For me, cinema needs to always be aesthetic. Even if you’re making the world in any kind of strata of society, I feel that cinematically it just needs to be beautiful because I’m a student of cinema. When I go to watch a movie, I just want to go to a different world that the director has created, and that’s what I think Kunal had managed to create for this film. I always try to create costume and create looks. Even if it’s a simple look, I always try to add an element of my own rather than it being a purchased piece directly. You look at the characters and when you see the film you’ll know that all the characters’ clothes are clothes that that character will wear. But when you actually look into it, you will see there are so many different elements that we have put into each outfit.”

One of the most striking examples of that approach is Kunal’s now-discussed orange fur coat. In fact, Roy had made the coat himself during a trip to London and, despite the team already having another look planned for the scene, had a strong instinct that it belonged in VIBE.

“It is my personal fur coat, I have to say. So I made that when I was in London. For my London trip, I made that myself and when we were discussing the film there was a scene when, you see the film, you’ll know where he narrated the scene and in my head I don’t know why I just told him, ‘Listen, I have the perfect outfit for it.’ And we had a completely different look for that scene made, discussed and all that stuff. But I don’t know why I was very, very sure that this is the outfit for that scene. There is nobody in the world who will wear that orange fur coat and sit and do the stuff that he has done in the film. When I brought it out he was laughing, he’s like, ‘Rick, what the f**k are you doing?’ I was like, ‘Kunal, just wear it. I’m telling you this will be iconic.’ And he started laughing like, ‘Okay, I’ll try it on for you.’ Then he wore it and then he was so excited. Then he was like, ‘Okay, you know what, you’re right, this actually makes sense. Let’s put it in the scene.’”

Roy says the actor-director was willing to experiment. For a designer who likes to alter and build on clothes, that made the collaboration particularly productive.

“I have rarely worked with directors who are as open to experimenting with looks as he is, as a director as well as an actor. That combo was fantastic. I would literally give him an outfit, I will see it on him and that’s who I am. I love changing things, adding things. I’ll tell him, ‘Will you give me 10 minutes? I want to do something to it.’ And he would laugh, he’d give it to me and I will do anything to that outfit and come back and he will just wear it.”

Roy sees that character-first approach as increasingly important at a time when, according to him, film fashion can sometimes lean heavily on existing trends.

“When you are trying to make a person look good, it’s a completely different kind of a mind space from when you’re trying to create a trend via a character of that film. The designers from all these films, your Manish Malhotra, your Neeta Lulla and all, they were not referencing styles. They were trying to create style. Nowadays I think most stylists are only trying to reference style and replicate that. I still try to do the old-school way because I’m a designer and I’m trained. It needs to be specific to that film. So when people go back to the film they will be like, ‘Oh, this outfit is from that film,’ which used to happen before and now recently it’s not because everybody is wearing everything and they all look the same eventually.”

Roy had a fanboy moment while working with Sharmila Tagore, who has a cameo in ‘Vibe’. He shared, “Sharmila ji was delightful. She is so beautiful and well-spoken. I spoke to her in Bengali, and she was so excited. I truly had a fan moment.”