Emma Watson's Beauty And The Beast costumes were crafted in India

While Emma Watson put her Disney princess' shoes on and created magic on screen by retelling the story of the Beauty and the Beast tale, Indian artisans were weaving their own form of magic offscreen through Belle’s wardrobe.

Sinéad O’Sullivan who is the assistant costume designer of the movie had quite the task on her shoulders as she had to do justice to the eighteenth-century aesthetic which was no small task. 

As part of her commitment to the ‘Who made my clothes’ initiative, O’Sullivan shared the story of the artisan brothers Kasam and Juma who brought the beautiful Aari work alive. 

The costume designer took to Instagram and posted a picture of the brothers and captioned it - "Belle's bodice from @Beautyandthebeast was beautifully hand embroidered by artisan brothers Kasam and Juma in Bhuj, Northern India. They used a technique called "Aari work" which is a very fine chain stitch traditional to the Kutch area of Gujarat. This style lent itself very nicely to this eighteenth century French floral design. Costume designed by Jacqueline"

The fine chain stitch embroidery is native to the Kutch area, eventually made its way to Belle’s bodice in the movie.

And the Indian connect doesn’t end there. Watson’s famous red cape was crafted using 12 different fabrics that were sourced from fair trade co-operatives in India. 

We sure are feeling proud to be Indian today! What about you? 

@beautyandthebeast is out today! I was an assistant designer to Jacqueline Durran on the job, which had a costume team of almost 100 people. As a team, we tried to source ethical, fair-trade and sustainable fabrics wherever possible. For Belle's "red cape look" in particular we decided to challenge ourselves to see how difficult it would be to create a costume that was head to toe fair-trade, organic and sustainable, but which didn’t compromise Jacqueline's design. We contacted Eco Age, who provided us with a set of criteria which we could adhere to. All of the production was done in our in-house workshops, and the whole costume team got involved in the challenge. This specific costume required 12 different fabrics to make her cape, jacket, blouse, bodice, skirts and bloomers, with trims and ties, and we ensured that each element was certified organic and fair-trade. Our dyeing team took on the challenge of using natural and low impact dyes, and printing with traditional wood blocks, which the set carpenters helped make in the construction department, from redundant bits of the set. Some of the fabrics and trims used were vintage, including the cape which was made from hand-woven Scottish Jacob’s wool, that was then over-dyed using madder. The fabric for the jacket was made using a hand-woven linen found on E-bay, which was actually a lady in manchester’s school project from the 1960’s. The rest of the fabrics were sourced from fairtrade co-operatives in India and Nepal. #whomademyclothes #whomademycostume #ethicalcostume #ootd #jacquelinedurran #fairtrade #behindthescenes #beautyandthebeast #artisan #organic #naturaldyes #vintage #disney #sustainable @beautyandthebeast

Beauty And The Beast released on 23 February 2017 in London and hit theatres in India, 17th of March 2017.