Poor Things Designers Break Down Surreal Cities and Costumes

Table Of Content

• Meet Rose Schlossberg: Jackie Kennedy’s Granddaughter and Modern Look-alike
• White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2024 Best Beauty: Scarlett Johansson, Keri Russell and More
• Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons Go Pedal to the Metal in 'Kinds of Kindness' Teaser
• Kristi Noem Describes Executing Puppy She 'Hated' in New Book

They're some of the biggest sleeves in the film, and they hold themselves up. They're like balloons, but they're made of nothing. Partly, we couldn't easily get fabrics between Hungary and the U.K., because of Brexit. The idea is that she's removed a skirt and we're seeing what's underneath, and it's just odd. And I suppose that with a lot of the clothes, I was striving to find things that had an organic quality.

Meet Rose Schlossberg: Jackie Kennedy’s Granddaughter and Modern Look-alike

I didn't have the foggiest idea of what it was all about — I was only about 19 when I watched it — but I was really drawn to the imagery. It's set in the early '60s, and it's all filmed on a Greek island and the light is just stunning. Brigitte Bardot is wearing these incredible early-1960s suits and really chic little skirts and this fabulous headband. Waddington notes that while the production designers had already sketched out a look for the film when she came onboard, Lanthimos wanted her to first develop her own visual response to the script. “The only brief really was that he didn’t want it to be overtly like a period drama” — the script is set in the 1880s — “and he didn’t want it to be overtly like a science fiction film,” Waddington said.

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The best places to study the art and technology of costume, from millinery to video game character wardrobes. He also thanked all the cast members including Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh and Cillian Murphy, as well as his wife, "the incredible Emma Thomas … producer of all our films, and all our children. I love you." "The other night, I was panicking -- as you can see, happens a lot -- that maybe something like this could happen," she continued.

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At the 96th Oscars, Waddington won Best Costume Design, amongst Poor Thing's four total wins. She says the entire experience has been "the opportunity of a lifetime." "Yorgos has a very good way of getting his collaborators to be playful and experiment and explore and create their own thing," the designer reflects. Waddington, who has worked on period dramas like Hulu’s The Great and Altitude Films’ Lady Macbeth, says that working with the Oscar-nominated director Lanthimos is like walking a tightrope. With no boundaries around timeframes, style, and architectural design, Lanthimos steered the surrealist ship, ultimately helping Waddington, Heath, and Price land their first Oscar nomination.

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It was a bit like opera and not really a film, so we had to simmer it down. We spoke with Poor Things costume designer Holly Waddington to learn more about how she arrived at the film’s unique look – and what it was like to collaborate with Emma Stone on this once-in-a-lifetime character. The film, which is saturated in color and humor, is also an explosion of beautiful costumes, helmed by costume designer Holly Waddington. The Critics Choice Award nominee, who has previously worked on Atonement and Clash of the Titans, crafted hundreds of costume pieces alongside her team to outfit the cast while filming in Hungary. If an MFA at an Ivy League institution is one’s goal, look no further than the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.

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The clothing styles within the brothel carried similar themes of sexual expression. You’ll never find Bella in a corset, nor any of the other sex workers in the Parisian brothel. Instead they’re dressed in clothing with skin-tone hues that accentuate the female frame, Waddington expresses. Costume designer Holly Waddington, who is nominated for Best Costume Design at the 96th Academy Awards, is to thank for that. The whole look of the world is strange in its proximity to the Victorian period while completely avoiding signature details, incorporating anachronistic touches, and creating specific textures and shapes for these characters.

Poor Things Costumes: Big Shoulders, Period Details Create Modern Past - IndieWire

Poor Things Costumes: Big Shoulders, Period Details Create Modern Past.

Posted: Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

For me, that was a significant texture that had to do with almost like the frills that you might see if you looked at a piece of tripe, or if you looked at the innards of an animal, or if you look at the frills on a piece of seaweed, or a sea creature. Yorgos was really open-minded to anything I would have come up with, and I presented him with a lot of ideas and options from the late 19th century, and he kept going towards these enormous sleeves. It pushes forward this sense of otherness – these highly textured fabrics that are quite creature-like.

I was trying to give them all a different identity. Willem Dafoe's character, Baxter, his look was the most progressive in his whole life. That comes through a lot in the book, I really responded to that in the book.

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It pushes forward this sense of otherness—these highly textured fabrics that are quite creaturelike. For the budding costume designer, choosing the right school can be as daunting as constructing a period garment from scratch. Waddington usually works on projects where logic supersedes wonder, ultimately leading to more boring results, she says. In Poor Things, the costume designer felt encouraged to forget about Bella’s age as she traveled to Lisbon, Alexandria, Paris, and back to London. They spoke less about whether the actions were appropriate, and more about the easiest way to take her clothes off – and on again.

“He ends up in this slightly sad gray striped suit that then just kind of disintegrates,” she says. By the end of the film, “I needed him to feel like he just lost the plot completely,” she adds. “We were playing with how she would style herself in the way that maybe a five-year-old dresses up in their mother’s wardrobe,” she adds.

It's Time to Talk About the Oscar for Best Costumes - TIME

It's Time to Talk About the Oscar for Best Costumes.

Posted: Fri, 08 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Initially stuck in childlike development in the body of a grown woman, she begins to outgrow her environment with her father-like keeper. When she runs off with a ridiculous lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella begins her journey to self-discovery through sexuality, education, and learning from those around her. The playfulness and freedom of Bella’s wardrobe, however, is also reigned in a bit as the film goes on. She wanders around Lisbon in the cutest shorts and bolero combo, but Waddington is careful about when Bella can be relaxed versus when she has to play a part as Duncan’s (Mark Ruffalo) companion. “Duncan would never have gone out for dinner with [Bella] wearing a deconstructed outfit because he wants to present her,” said the designer.

While most of the costumes are based in that period, Bella had to stand out. Yorgos Lanthimos new, surreal sci-fi period piece, Poor Things, is a visual delight from the first frame. Perhaps the star of the frame is not Emma Stone’s transformative Bella Baxter or Mark Ruffalo’s haughty Duncan Wedderburn, but the clothes created for this visually rich world. When I was thinking about how I would approach Bella, I looked at my own children. I spend a lot of time with children in my life, and when they’re very tiny, they very quickly start to unravel – they end up with things missing, and have this kind of innate will to be naked. I liked the idea that Mrs Prim would get Bella ready in the mornings in a ladylike skirt and bodice, but by 10am, the skirt would be gone.

I wanted her to be in tailoring like them, black like them, but for there to be a small little flip so that when she gets up and you see her legs, she has no skirt on. They're heavier than her earlier outfits, they're more structured, they've got more body. It's suddenly like proper serious tailoring. It isn't light air-filled, dreamy, cloudy, girly stuff. As a bonus, students — who can pursue a BFA in theatrical design or a B.A. In theater with an emphasis in design — will have the opportunity to design in state-of-the-art performance spaces in the school’s new Drama Center later this year.