When you’re styling a fashion shoot, you’re always negotiating between the world you planned and the world you’ve been given.
For days before my shoot in Chettinad, in southern Tamil Nadu, I was scrolling through archival photographs, reading about mercantile families and trade routes, saving screenshots of tiled floors like they were runway looks. I was hoping they would lend the shoot the visual backbone I had in mind. I knew Chettinad in theory long before I met it in person. In my head, it was all symmetry and splendour: pillars, courtyards, lacquered Burmese teak, a particular old-world maximalism.
Then I arrived with suitcases packed with garment bags, hangers, safety pins, double-sided tape. The usual circus. A stylist’s armoury. And yet the minute I stepped inside, I realised this wasn’t a place that demanded drama.
Chettinad is simply extremely sure of itself. The mansions teach you this immediately. They don’t read as buildings so much as firm establishments, standing in defiance of anything seasonal or trendy.
We had lunch at the Chettinad Mansion. The food kept arriving almost without consent, as if the table itself refused to tolerate scarcity. Between bites, I kept looking down at the Athangudi tiles underfoot, laid out like a masterclass in pattern. Every inch of the town was dressed in colour combinations so potent you could get a sugar rush just looking at them. Nothing matched. Everything worked.
By late afternoon, the light shifts, allowing the courtyard and all its textures to breathe differently.
Over dinner that evening, jewellery designer Meenu Subbiah, a close friend of the team, told me about the long history of trade and cultural exchange between Burma and Chettinad, and Tamil Nadu more broadly. Suddenly, the shared affection for coconut-based dishes and the lungi made complete sense. I began noticing parallels in how silks and cottons are draped without blouses in the heat, and how hair is adorned with white flowers.
This trip made one thing uncomfortably clear. We’re taught to treat style as something you construct. Something you buy, assemble, and upload into Instagram carousels, sandwiched between memes and nonchalant photos of whatever drink café culture is currently obsessed with. By the time I left for the airport, I realised I had been packing “looks” for a place that has no use for them.
The best style lesson Chettinad offered was disarmingly simple: dress for the day you are actually having.
Photographed by Farhan Hussain
Styled by Manglien Gangte
Hair and makeup: Eshwar Log. Bookings editor: Aliza Fatma. Models: Khushi Rathee, Nejm.
Assisted by: Firoz Ehsan Mallick (photo); Ankur Singh Nitwal, Saumya Goradia (styling); Gargi Karmakar (hair and makeup); Aparna Gunaranjan (bookings).
Photographer’s agency: Feat Artists.
Hospitality partner: Chettinadu Mansion and Court.
Special thanks: Ms Meenu Subbiah, Ms Visalakshi Ramaswamy, Ms Meenakshi Meyyappan
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