Ashley Rebello immersed himself in the bylanes of Lucknow and Indore, slipping into weddings uninvited and striking up conversations with strangers, all in a bid to understand how Muslim families truly dress in their everyday lives. Determined to move beyond familiar clichés, he wanted the world of Haq to feel lived-in and honest. The Suparn Verma-directed film, starring Emraan Hashmi, Yami Gautam and Vartika Singh, demanded that level of rigour, and Ashley approached each character with the same meticulous care. For Emraan's look, he spent time with lawyers in Lucknow, studying their silhouettes and subtleties. For Yami and Vartika, he drew from the wardrobes of the mothers and sisters of his closest friends, observing the quiet elegance of their personal style. Every garment, he emphasises, was hand-stitched, not plucked off a store rack. Reflecting on how the ease of fashion access today has reshaped the craft, Ashley travels back to his early days on Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar and his work with Karisma Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Sonali Bendre and Tabu. He recalls how, back then, film costumes often sparked trends, outfits were copied and recreated everywhere, something he believes has faded in the current climate. Before signing off, Ashley also leaves us with a handful of styling insights. Here are excerpts from the conversation. How did you approach the styling in Haq? Back in the '70s my parents never wore bell-bottoms, or my mom never wore the regular kind of sarees and salwar kameez. She always bought fabric and would cut fits from one saree to the next one. There was a newness to everything that she brought in her clothes. Suparn gave me a lot of liberty. Everything was stitched. I didn't buy ready-made clothes. Even the clothes that the little kids were wearing were stitched. We bought the fabric and got it embroidered. That's what gave it the authenticity. Tell us about how you created Emraan and Yami's looks. It was challenging because Emraan had never played a Muslim character before. The subject was sensitive, so every detail had to be accurate. But once he saw the costumes, he loved every bit of it. I took a lot of references from local lawyers in Indore and Lucknow for Emraan's look and got pictures of how they dress up and go to work. A lot of them wear pathanis and bandh galas, and that's how I dressed him. I told Yami different stories about how my Muslim friends' mothers and sisters would carry their dupatta and hold it, and she did exactly that in the film. When Yami's mother saw the film, she told her, 'Yami, you look so beautiful. I've never seen you look so beautiful.' And that's a big compliment because Yami's mother never comments on her clothes. Yami was so happy with me that she gave me her next film. Tell us about your research process. I travelled to Lucknow, Indore and a few other places, meeting different people through friends, even attending weddings uninvited. I made a whole load of new friends. I wanted to observe how women still carry their dupattas in everyday life. I'd also think about how Tabu would just hold her dupatta so effortlessly, or like Aamir Khan's sisters would sit so casually in their salwar kameez. That ease is a character in itself. I got beautiful salwar kameezs made and done from Lucknow, from destitute women, who are carrying on this legacy for years and years. Do you feel Muslim characters are often styled stereotypically? Sometimes there is a lack of research for a lot of films. There was a historical release this year where they used bright colours like lime greens and pinks that didn't exist back then. In that era, only vegetable dye was used. How can you add these colours when they didn't even exist? I even saw one of the actors wearing heels with their kolhapuris. I understand it's for height, but then you need to change it for the long shot. You can't overlook such small details. With Yami, if she was tired or needed comfortable footwear between shots, fine, but the moment it was a full shot, she'd change herself without being told. I got dupattas dyed and stitched from scratch. A proper dupatta is 2.75 to 3 meters, not the readymade ones that are just two and a quarter meters. Which costume was the most challenging to pull off for Haq? The final scene where the verdict is announced. Suparn wanted something in green, with a border, that looked like a shawl but still felt like a dupatta. It was insane because I was trying to get the colour right, then I had to dye it, fix the border by cutting one off a different shawl and attaching it. It was like a nightmare. But I still had to create multiple options. And here's what designers do that directors don't know: we make two really bad ones and one really good option that we actually want them to pick. When you look back at your Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar days, what do you remember most about those early days of costume design in Bollywood? Haq was made the way films used to be made back then. There are very few