Docu filmmaker wears Chennai designer’s outfit to Oscars red carpet

Ashwin Thiyagarajan, 30, lent a city connect to the glitzy awards ceremony as filmmaker Sami Khan, who was nominated with Smriti Mundhra for their documentary film, St Louis Superman, walked down the carpet in an Ashwin-designed regal black sherwani.

Speaking about this opportunity, Ashwin told DT Next that a chance meeting with Hollywood stylist Venk Modur, who also happens to have south Indian roots, made it possible. “Modur was introduced to me by a friend. During his recent trip to Chennai a few weeks ago, he visited my store and said he was quite surprised by my designs. In January, when he was in Mumbai, he asked me to send in a few designs. I quickly got to it and within 2-3 days, the design was readied,”Ashwin said.

The black sherwani combines Indian aesthetics with a contemporary touch and was not flashy,” he said. With his design being represented for the first time at an international platform like the Oscars, Ashwin confessed to waiting for feedback from the star-studded red carpet. “It feels surreal. I’m waiting with bated breath to see more images from the event and to hear the response to my design,” he said.

“South Asian designers getting an opportunity to showcase their designs at global platforms makes him happy,” Ashwin added. “I see it (South Asian designers being represented) happening more and I think it is only going to get better going ahead,” he reiterates.

Meanwhile, Modur, who picked Ashwin’s design for Sami, admitted to being “blown away” by the Chennai designer’s creativity. “I was introduced to Ashwin when I was in Chennai and his creativity blew me away... From over 30 weeks of hand stitching to a hyper-modern take on the classic sherwani, I wanted to showcase many sides of South Asian artistry,” Modur wrote on social media.

Even though the Oscars this year went host-free, the free-style rap by actor-rapper Utkarsh Ambudkar won over the internet. What many, however, may not know is about his south Indian roots. “Utkarsh’s grandfather worked in the Railways and settled down in Chennai post retirement. His grandparents had a common ancestor in Sir V Bhashyam Aiyangar, a lawyer whose statue we can see in the city. Utkarsh’s parents met in Madurai, where they were doing PhD in microbiology. Utkarsh’s father Suresh Ambudkar and mother Indu, got married and moved to the US,” recollects the rapper’s relative residing in the city, S Raghavan. 

92 years of Oscar history were shattered when the S Korean hit Parasite became the first film not in the English language to win the Academy Award for best picture. The class-struggle thriller faced stiff competition, but Bong Joon Ho managed to pull off the final win in a moment that had audience members leaping to their feet. Here’s a list of other winners: