In his 30's a man goes from being trendy to stylish. He is making enough money to buy the kind of clothes he wants. But since the 20's happened not too long back, he's probably like Farhan Akthar. The director spends most of his time in FCUK jeans, but doesn't shy away from borrowing his famous father's elegant kurtas when the occasion demands.

Farhan Akhtar likes to believe his sense of humour is a little off-beat. And so is his style. Today Akhtar, dressed in denims and a grey T-shirt, looks around and demands, "So, what do we do?" Ask him about the clothes he was meant to get along and he asks innocently, "What clothes?" And then grins. "Ok, don't stress, it is in my car."
All through the shoot, he is restless, often bouncing around, especially when he wears a military-inspired jacket he picked up in Ladhakh while shooting for his last film, Lakshya. "Wearing the jacket makes me feel free again." Stylish, tech-savvy, Generation Next director...there are loads of adjectives and images associated with Farhan, the drifter who dropped out of college, watched loads of movies for a year and then took on a job, first in an advertising agency and later, as an assistant to director Pankaj Parashar because his mom, script writer Honey Irani, threatened to throw him out of the house. "But images don't tell you the entire story," he says.
Stylish is one such image. The 32-year-old director has often appeared in public wearing a hair band to hold his long curls back (right now, they are short and gelled) and looking every inch the trendy man. The clothes he carts to the shoot - a vintage-inspired brown jacket from Lucky Brown, a soft polka-dotted shirt from French Connection, the Mara tee with a cow on it, the Ladhakh jacket, and British designer Paul Smith's hooded jacket - are all casual or semi-casual, comfortable and "easy to maintain.
"My style statement is to be as comfortable as possible. I have a slight resistance to wearing a shirt, until an event demands it. I am a T-shirt man, but not those body hugging ones."
His wardrobe, says Farhan, is dominated by jeans, "all of the same kind, almost all from FCUK brand, which fit me the best." The tees could be a Mara, a Paul Smith or raaste ka maal (picked from roadside stalls). He often wears kurtas taken from his father, poet-lyricist-script writer Javed Akthar's huge wardrobe. "He has got some amazing kurtas, and I raid his cupboard every time I am at his house."
Farhan remembers how his father dressed when he was younger: those bell bottom pants, thick belts and clogs - huge shoes with heels that made hell a lot of noise every time his father walked. "That's how we knew dad had left his office, which was then located at our house. "
It's from Akhtar that he inherited the love for finer things in life. "I am a sucker for good food. I believe cooking is a great art form. I have inherited my love for literature and poetry from dad, and for cinema from both mom and dad. So, yes I respond to art and books and movies and food. I have grown up on films by directors like Guru Dutt, Martin Scorsese and Warren Betty."
He himself went to college in the terrible '80s, the fashion disaster years. "We used to wear those hideous thin belts, big balloon bottoms and sported bad hairstyles." As he matured, his style too changed. "I think I grew into this style sometime in 1996 and since then, it's been this way," says Farhan. "I remember I would wear those CSC Carona shoes when everyone else was wearing the more fashionable moccasins. Even today, my style is laidback. I don't take too much trouble to dress up. Maybe I will throw a jacket over a nice shirt if I have to go somewhere very formal." At the end of the day, he still predominantly wears greys, blacks and blues, and keeps away from the pinks. "Hygiene is important and good grooming is all about being shaved, having my hair combed and pushed back."
Farhan has often experimented with his looks, especially his hair, courtesy wife Adhuna. He grew them shoulder length (the band came on then), then he cut it short. The blue jeans and black-blue-green-grey tees have remained a constant. He appeared on dance show Nach Baliye last season in a round-neck kurta teamed with a conventional blazer.
Farhan says that he has a weird sense of humour and a casual style, which "also come through in his films". The movies are just an extension of his persona. He insists that Don, his latest, a remake of the 1970s Amitabh Bachchan thriller, is an interpretation and not a scene-to-scene remake. It started out with the tag line, "Don ko pakdna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai," he says. "What if we were to explore this a bit further? If he was so smart, then let him get away with the crime."
Farhan was just seven when he saw the original and "it scared me. The character of Don was terrifying." His version uses the earlier film as the starting point. Beyond that, it is a peek into the twisted mind of a man completely in control. There is much more edginess to Shah Rukh Khan's portrayal of Don. "We gave him white clothes for the day and really dark jackets for the night scenes, so that he doesn't stand out. Yet, there is something creepy about him."
According to Farhan, Shah Rukh's look is almost androgynous; the way he delicately holds the gun or walks, "it unnerves you. His kind of twisted approach is much different from the macho man, James Bond-like feel that the earlier Don had." "SRK has an image of the superstar and it was fun to push the envelope a bit, to make him look weird, in a trendy sort of a way. That goes perfectly with the way I think."
His style team, which included hairstylist and wife Adhuna and designer Aki Narula, worked out a wardrobe that struck the right balance between being "metrosexual, sensual and dangerous." Don's wardrobe included printed shirts, interesting ties that went within the shirt, and velvet jackets, especially the black one with Chinese-looking lapels he wore in the party scene.
"We fused the '70s retro element with Malaysia, where the film was shot. We incorporated certain motifs, like the clove one from Mr Bachchan's jacket, and used it as print on Shah Rukh's shirt. We used batik and floral motifs Malaysia is known for on his shirts." The unusual idea of wearing a tie within the shirt came from Aki. "It stemmed from my fascination for the bow that Mr Bachchan wears in the first scene of the old Don when he turns around in that chair. But a bow doesn't work now, and a tie worn normally would have looked very corporate."
Though a little too long, Don is slick and tech-heavy. There's effective use of split scenes and the action sequences seem very similar to Matrix. Again, it's an extension of his personality. Farhan is obsessed with gadgets. "Everywhere I travel, I shop for gadgets. I am waiting for the Play Station 3 to come out." He is also planning to buy a fan-driven backpack produced by a British company! "This means, it actually has a small fan attached to the backpack that gives you momentum as you climb higher. You have to go to the UK to train how to use it. "
Farhan's last two films also had him working on the way the characters, and the movie in its entirety, looked. Lakshya, a war drama shot in Ladhakh and Delhi, had Hrithik Roshan go from a casually dressed guy in chinos and tees to an army man in fatigues. For Dil Chahta Hai, a coming-of-age story about three friends, he cast Suzanne Captain Merwanji, who had earlier designed films like Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay and Kama Sutra, as production designer. "She streamlined the look. Everything, from make-up to hair, costumes and sets were designed in a way that they would look in harmony. In my personal life, I am not too particular. But when it comes to my films, I am very particular."
His next film is a period drama set in 1905 in a village near Kolkata, and seen through the eyes of a little boy of seven or eight. He has turned co-producer with his friend and producer Ritesh Sidhwani for Don and his sister Zoya Akhtar's debut film, Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd.; he picked up director-actor Rajat Kapoor's small budget movie Raghu Romeo for distribution. And finally, he makes his acting debut in friend Anand Sarapur's Fakir, a film based on a real-life incident from director Homi Adajania's (Being Cyrus) life, in which Homi took a fakir to Venice for an art show. "My career graph has been pretty experimental, " says Farhan.

OFFICE	EVENING	WEEKEND
Black formal suit Rs 12999, Shirt Rs 1599 by Park Avenue. Tie Rs 1195 by Marks & Spencer. Tan shoes Rs 4295 by Florsheim at Metro. Brown leather belt Rs 795 by Marco Ricci. Louis Vuitton Abbesses Messenger bag with signature monogram Rs 54 500. Polaroid eyewear Rs 4428.	Light weight suit Rs 12455 by Tommy Hilfiger. Black silk shirt with pinstripes Rs 16 300 by Boss Hugo Boss. Belt Rs 895 by Hidesign. Black leather shoes with blue detailing Rs 3250 by Daks. Sunglasses Rs 3103 by Polaroid.	Light blue distressed jeans Rs 4795 by Tommy Hilfiger. White pinstriped shirt Rs 2775 by Tommy Hilfiger. Green Corduroy sports jacket Rs 8995 by Gant. Sports shoes Rs 2490 by Metro GenX. Black leather belt with signature buckle Rs 1595 by Levis.

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