National Award-winning costume designer Neeta Lulla has revisited her work on filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 2002 blockbuster Devdas, revealing how the production quietly revolutionised the way costume design is executed in Indian cinema — most notably by introducing a dedicated team of on-set costume assistants for the first time in the industry's history.

A Small Workshop, a Grand Vision

Lulla shared that when she took on Devdas, she was a relatively new designer operating out of a workshop no larger than 350 to 400 square feet. 'I had five to six master tailors who used to cut the garments and stitch them with me. How we created these outfits, how we worked day and night, and created the look for Devdas still amazes me,' she said in a video she shared online, accompanied by a series of images showcasing Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's iconic look as Paro.

A First for Indian Filmmaking

What set Devdas apart behind the scenes was Bhansali's decision to grant Lulla five dedicated costume assistants — a move she describes as unprecedented. 'This was the first time I had requested assistance, and Sanjay had given me five assistants. This was also the first time in the history of filmmaking that a designer had five assistants to monitor the looks on set so that they looked absolutely impeccable,' Lulla noted.

The scale of the undertaking demanded it. The film featured hundreds of handcrafted looks across multiple principal characters, including Madhuri Dixit as the courtesan Chandramukhi and Shah Rukh Khan as the tormented Devdas, requiring meticulous continuity management across every frame. Lulla said costume design on the film 'evolved into a department that demanded precision, planning, and collaboration.'

The Legacy of Devdas's Costumes

'What audiences saw as effortless grandeur was made possible by an entirely new way of working behind the scenes,' Lulla reflected. She described the film not merely as a cinematic achievement but as a structural turning point for her craft — one that established the costume department as an indispensable, professionally organised unit on large-scale productions.

The film also features Jackie Shroff, Kirron Kher, Smita Jaykar, and Vijayendra Ghatge. Adapted from the 1917 Bengali-language novel of the same name by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, the story follows Devdas Mukherjee, a wealthy law graduate whose return from London and thwarted marriage to childhood love Parvati 'Paro' sets him on a path of alcoholism and emotional ruin, finding fleeting solace with the golden-hearted courtesan Chandramukhi.

Why It Still Matters

More than two decades after its release, Devdas continues to be studied as a benchmark of production design in Bollywood. Lulla's reflections serve as a reminder that the film's visual opulence was not accidental — it was the product of a new operational model that has since become standard practice on big-budget Hindi productions. This is the kind of institutional change that rarely makes headlines at the time, but reshapes an entire industry's working culture.