There are three Bollywood ladies of legendary repute who preferred to wear only one colour.Lata Mangeshkar, Nargis and Simi Garewal were known to wear only white. What was this fascination for and fixation on one colour all about?
I once asked Lataji and she confided : “I don’t know why, but I’ve always preferred to wear white sarees. It gives me a sense of peace that no other colour can.Whenever I recorded a song in a saree of a different colour it went didn’t go well. It’s not that I shun non-white sarees. But people are so used to seeing me in white that they are taken aback when I wear another color. I wore a coloured sari once to a recording. The chorus girls laughed so hard I swore never to dabble in colour ever again. After that I said, ‘Rang hatao, Lata.’ From childhood I preferred white.
About her friend Nargis Dutt, Lataji said, “She always wore white saris with matching accessories. And since white was my favourite colour she would send over the door-to-door sari sellers from Lucknow to my house. I have never seen her wearing non-white.”
Nargis Dutt was know as the ‘lady in white.’ While conversing with her wonderful husband Sunil Dutt once I asked him about her favourite colour. Dutt Saab laughed, “It is not her favourite colour. It is the only colour for her. I’ve hardly ever seen her wearing any other colour. I like white too. But no one can carry it off the way she can.”
Simi Garewal is also known to wear only white. Says the sophisticated actress who has played everyone from an enchantress in Siddhartha to a vamp in Karz. “I’ll continue to wear white. My fascination for the colour has been with me for as long as I can remember. Even as a child my best party dresses were white. Today I can shop for clothes in other colours. I once bought myself two black suits. But I could never wear them. If I wear any colour but white I see a stranger in the mirror.”