The devil really exists in the details, essentially when it comes to Karan Johar’s wardrobe in The Traitors. If season 1 of Amazon Prime Video’s reality show saw the filmmaker embrace the excess, season 2 is all camp on steroids.

“Karan can wear a lot of capes. He can easily switch from being a director to an actor to a talk show host to an award show host to a reality show host. I haven’t seen anyone be so at ease with who they are when they’re doing such different things,” his stylist Eka Lakhani tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview.

Inside Karan Johar’s Traitors wardrobe

Of all the many roles Karan Johar takes on with ease, Traitors is perhaps the furthest removed from his real-life persona. Somewhere, it feeds into his perceived image as Bollywood’s dictatorial ruler, a persona he briefly embraced in Aryan Khan’s The Ba**ds of Bollywood on Netflix last year. “Traitors already carries a little bit of that crime thriller aspect to it within the reality show spectrum. Karan wanted his wardrobe to be very different from what he wears on Koffee with Karan or any other reality show he’s done. We wanted Traitors to have the language of Karan not being himself, but becoming the character he is on Traitors. You’ll see it happen not only with his wardrobe, but also with his personality. You don’t see him chirpy and goofing around like he usually does,” points out Eka.

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It’s probably the camp aesthetic of Traitors that helps Karan get an entry point into that personality. Because it’s not just a random page taken out of the camp textbook, but a curated look in sync with not only the show, but also what the episode, its setting, and the task of the day entail. “We wanted to keep the opening episode somewhere in the ‘love and war’ space. Which is why you see him with a black robe with roses on it. That’s when we introduced his cat, Boo. I don’t know if you noticed it, but when Boo is introduced, he has a collar with a rose on it. In that episode, we see his second change where all his roses are gone, and he’s just kept one big rose with him. So, we tried to keep the story going for that episode,” underlines Ekta.

 

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Another look that captured the audience’s attention is the black overcoat with a cape designed like a crow feathers. Eka Lakhani claims that it’s being called the “Moira Rose outfit”, referring to the iconic crow-inspired costume worn by late Catherine O’Hara in Netflix’s popular comedy show Schitt’s Creek. “We wanted to add that extra layer of mystery to the oath ceremony, just that feeling of hiding in the shadows,” says Eka. Another look had blood-red splattering all across his white robe. “When there was a murder in the episode, we thought let it be all about blood. We didn’t want it to be aesthetically spread blood, but just blood spattered all over,” she adds, laughing.

 

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Not too many filmmakers — probably none in India — can pull off these looks, whether on television or Instagram. Eka understands that those who follow Karan Johar on Instagram may be surprised to see him this way on Traitors. But the shock value of that wardrobe is so high that the polarising response is almost embroidered into all the looks. “We know it’s going to go viral. While creating a look, we know it’s what people would love or hate. There’s no in between. And we’re okay with that. We’re okay with getting comments that they don’t get the look. It’s a high-impact look designed to make some noise,” explains Eka.

 

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Eka Lakhani, Karan Johar go a long way back

Ironically, Eka Lakhani’s collaboration with Karan Johar began with his least glamorous film — Lust Stories (2018) on Netflix. The short film, starring Kiara Advani and Vicky Kaushal, was too small for Karan’s go-to costume designer Manish Malhotra. Which is when he roped in Eka, best known for her work in stylised yet rooted cinema like Santosh Sivan’s Urumi (2011) and Ceylon (2013), and Mani Ratnam’s Kadal (2013) and Kaatru Veliyidai (2017) in Tamil, and Gulaab Gang (2014), NH10 (2015), 24 (2016), and Ok Jaanu (2017) in Hindi.

“My association with Mani sir is what defines me the most. He gave me my first break. All my basic learnings and film schooling is from him,” says Eka, who as we speak, is on the set of the filmmaker’s next in Puducherry. “What I’ve learnt the most from him is to keep it real. Whether I’m on a Mani Ratnam set, Karan Johar set or a Rajkumar Hirani set, I’m giving them what they want and the world they want to create. In the end, it’s a director’s medium. Their worlds are different, but they just want to show beauty in a certain way. I’m just adapting to their aesthetic,” she adds. Given her background, she was the perfect fit to come up with those muted yet gorgeous cotton saris for Kiara in Lust Stories. She married her background in design with Karan’s cinematic aesthetic to give those saris a quintessential small-town flavour, without falling prey to the “raw and grunge” textures of realistic cinema.

Lust Stories was followed by Karan’s segment in another Netflix anthology, Ghost Stories (2020), where Eka designed costumes for Mrunal Thakur and Avinash Tiwary. She landed her first feature with Karan three years later — Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023). She considers the Rocky Randhawa-West Delhi wardrobe for Ranveer Singh in the family comedy as her favourite work for the actor, whom she continues to style till date. “It was actually Karan who pushed me towards styling. I’d styled actors for promotions briefly, but not as much as I’m doing now. Karan gave birth to my parallel career of being a stylist,” says Eka, giving credit where it’s due.

After Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, Eka began styling Karan for all his public appearances. Karan has maintained that while the bling and the love for diamonds in both his and Ranveer’s wardrobe stems from their Sindhi genes, he’s gone through a style evolution of his own, switching back to monochromes and all-black attires. Confessing that he no longer feels the need to attract attention for the sake of it, he said he had come into his own. Eka has been more than happy to adapt. “As a stylist, it’s very important to grow with your client. It’s not about what looks good today, but which phase of your life you’re in now. Hence, I go along with them on their journey,” she ays.

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“I was with Karan when he was enjoying all the colours and the diamonds. And now, I’m with him in this phase where he wanted it to be a little more subdued. But we’re still serving a look. The genre might have changed, but we’re not shying away from fashion,” she insists, adding that both their aesthetics have also rubbed on each other. “I also keep learning from him. He’s the first one to know what’s in. You can take away the colour out of him, but not the fashion,” says Eka Lakhani, echoing the same sentiment for Ranveer Singh, who was once a reliable head-turned ont the red carpet.”My head still turns when he walks the red carpet. He’s still a head-turner,” asserts Eka, laughing. “Now, whenever I see Karan or Ranveer in a lot of colour, I take a beat and think we’re doing something wrong. So, I’m very happy with where they are fashion-vise,” she adds.

Karan Johar also agrees that despite his fashion sense, he couldn’t have shaped his styling journey sans her expertise. “Eka’s skills as a stylist and curation of fashion is truly admirable. She has an old-world charm about how she approaches a garment,” Karan tells SCREEN. “She has the immense ability to capture the right costume at the right moment. From her designing the costumes in my films to her styling me for the Met Gala, we’ve had an emotional and exceptional journey. I can’t imagine being on a film set or at a big event without having Eka by my side,” he adds. For someone who shaped the wardrobe of Shah Rukh Khan in the late 1990s at the peak of his superstardom, it’s safe to say that in Eka Lakhani, he’s found the Karan Johar he didn’t know he was looking for.