Diwali designers: who will Priyanka Chopra, Katrina Kaif, Aishwarya Rai and other Bollywood beauties be wearing this year?

Nov 13 , 2020

From left, Diwali 2020 stylings from Sabyasachi, and actresses Katrina Kaif and Deepika Padukone. Photo: @sabyasachiofficial, @katrinakaif, @shaleenanathani/Instagram

With no bash at the Ambanis this year, Mumbai’s party people like Janhvi Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan and Deepika Padukone show off looks by Manish Malhotra and Sabyasachi on social media

If ever there has been a time we needed a festival to mark the victory of light over dark, knowledge over ignorance, surely now is that time. Happily, on November 14, Hindus everywhere will be celebrating Diwali, one of their most important annual festivals.

Hindus follow a lunisolar calendar – a blend of conventional solar calendar and a lunar one traditionally observed throughout Asia. Diwali falls in their month of Kartika, which this year runs from mid-October to mid-November.

This year’s festival of lights, love and prosperity will be conspicuously quieter in India than in the past, when the streets would teem with people and large parties were held all around the country, particularly in Mumbai where Bollywood stars come out in all their finery.

The “First Family” of Hindi-language films, the Bachchans, often host a soirée, for instance, with gilded invites sent out to their near and dear. In the 1970s and 1980s, showman Raj Kapoor’s lavish house parties were legendary, attended by the A-list of Bollywood with an open invite to just about everyone in the film industry, no matter their caste, creed or religion. The wealthiest Indian family in the world, the Ambanis, can usually be relied on to do something over-the-top at Antilia, the dynasty’s towering residence, hosting the crème de la crème of society, industry and politics.

With a Covid-19 vaccine still many moons away, few if any gilded invites or jasmine garlanded cards have been sent out this year. But that hasn’t stopped the fashionable from shopping online with Indian design houses to dress up for Diwali at home.

So what will the stars wear? We sampled their social feeds to come up with some ideas:

Katrina Kaif