From purple lips to a Gita-inscribed cape, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s style evolution was never about playing safe

By 2014 the vocabulary had changed entirely. She answered her detractors in a gold Roberto Cavalli fishtail gown, its criss-cross pattern, waist-cinching bustier and long train set off by red lips. The jewellery was pared back to a single large yellow-stone cocktail ring, a sign that she now trusted the dress to carry the look.

A year later she turned to Ralph & Russo, wearing an ivory gown with architectural folds and a bodice scattered with dark detailing. Its cascading high-low ruffles and navy floral appliqué were finished with star-shaped diamond earrings and dark nails, marking her move towards gowns built like sculpture rather than draped like evening dresses.

That year Aishwarya Rai Bachchan wore an appliqué floral gown by Lebanese-American designer Rami Kadi, reportedly made by five tailors over 300 hours, but nobody was looking at the embroidery. Her lilac lipstick overshadowed the off-shoulder gown and set Twitter alight, and several Indian designers told the press the colour clashed with the dress. She responded that she treats fashion as art, and in hindsight the purple lip reads as the first sign that she was willing to be divisive on purpose.

The next two years belonged to Dubai-based Filipino couturier Michael Cinco. In 2017 she channelled Cinderella in a powder-blue ballgown, worn with poker-straight hair and dark lips, a look so successful it became shorthand for her Cannes persona.

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Cinco returned the following year with a butterfly gown that, embroidered in ultra-violet Swarovski crystals, took 3,000 man-hours to create; the designer said it was meant to capture a butterfly’s metamorphosis. The jewellery took its cue from the embroidery, with pink gem chandelier earrings and a cluster ring in matching tones.

In 2019 she went graphic. For her second look that year she wore an off-shoulder tiered gown from Ashi Studio, its white feathers framing marquise diamond drops ringed in black stones, with a silver smoky eye completing the monochrome effect.

Returning after the pandemic, she wore a dramatic black and floral dress by Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda to the Top Gun: Maverick premiere. The black silk gown was covered in handmade multicoloured flowers and paired with the house’s Alta Gioielleria jewellery, including a sapphire and diamond ring.

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This was the year the silhouette went further than ever. For the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny screening she wore a futuristic silver hooded gown, custom-made by Azerbaijani label Sophie Couture, its sequinned hood dense enough to read as armour, finished with a black bow, a deep red lip and a diamond cluster ring.

She arrived with an injured wrist, and designer duo Falguni and Shane Peacock built the look around it: a custom black and white gown designed to complement the white plaster on her right arm, with hand-beaten molten gold 3D flowers and plates. Sculptural gold hoops and a domed gold ring carried the same hammered metal from the dress to the jewellery. Online critics were harsh, but she told Vogue that the designers called it a gilded glow, while to her it was simply magical.

This was where the story turned back towards India with real conviction. After opening in a Manish Malhotra ivory Banarasi saree with a necklace of over 500 carats of Mozambique rubies and uncut diamonds in 18-karat gold, she returned in Gaurav Gupta. The black velvet gown was hand-embroidered in silver, gold and charcoal and topped with micro glass crystals, and over it lay a Banarasi brocade cape handwoven in Varanasi and inscribed with a Sanskrit shloka from the Bhagavad Gita. The verse, which counsels action without attachment to its rewards, turned a couture gown into a personal statement, and she handled the moment gracefully when British actor Helen Mirren accidentally stepped on the cape.

This year’s opening look brought the arc full circle. She wore Indian designer Amit Aggarwal, who said the abyss blue gown, inspired by cosmic light and infinite space, took more than 1,500 hours of craftsmanship. Its sculpted, corded surface was paired with a sapphire and diamond necklace, and fans immediately compared it to one of her most famous Cannes appearances from nearly two decades earlier, the navy blue Roberto Cavalli gown she wore with a serpent necklace. The difference between the two says a great deal: the 2006 dress was a European house’s idea of glamour, while the 2026 version was built in India with a technique that belongs entirely to its designer.

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