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Whenever sleeves have been big for women – the Elizabethan period, the 1940s, the 1980s – women have generally been in a good place. Let’s say we had gone for an 1880s skinny sleeve – that would have put all the interest on the skirts and the bottoms, and it would have felt totally different. Throughout the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed production, Stone is seen wearing an array of striking outfits that include everything from ruffles to puffy sleeves, which Waddington said are a nod to empowerment. When "Poor Things" was released late last year, it left a lasting impression not only on avid moviegoers, but also fashion enthusiasts for its otherworldly costumes.

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In the film, a Frankenstein-like Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) undergoes a sexual awakening spanning several mythical cities with debauched lawyer Duncan (Mark Ruffalo). The film teeters between cruelty and comedy as Bella spends most scenes having loads of sex. The surrealist film draws inspiration from Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, set in the late nineteenth century, combining gothic horror, science fiction, and satire.
Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama
“I was exploring everything that had a connection to the body,” says Waddington. Set against a backdrop of London, Lisbon, Paris and Alexandria, the costumes support the narrative of a young woman’s social and sexual awakening. This period also marks Bella's interest in socialism and her aspiration to become a doctor, which is evident in her attire's practical yet stylish vibe. In another interview with ELLE, Waddington mentions drawing inspiration from socialist gatherings, incorporating elements of black dress, and referencing images of Victorian medical schools to craft Bella's evolving wardrobe. The story unfolds by taking viewers on a surreal journey across a steampunk and colorful 19th-century European setting, where Bella Baxter, a woman with the brain of an infant, embarks on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment. As Bella's mental age catches up with her physical development, she navigates a new world around her.
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Emma Stone Oscars 2024: 'Poor Things' designers Holly Waddington, Shona Heath, James Price break down the style of Bella Baxter - KGO-TV
Emma Stone Oscars 2024: 'Poor Things' designers Holly Waddington, Shona Heath, James Price break down the style of Bella Baxter.
Posted: Wed, 28 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
“Poor Things” won four Oscars in total, including Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design and Best Actress for Emma Stone, who attended the ceremony in a blue Louis Vuitton dress. To accomplish this, Titel Media GmbH tests, remediates and maintains the Website in-line with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which also bring the Website into conformance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. When designing the Parisian brothels, Heath and Price opted for cool blues and ultraviolet tones, pulling from paintings by French artists Luigi Loir and Edgar Degas. “She has just appeared in the world in the body of, let’s say, a 30-year-old woman but with the mind of an infant, so everybody else is a victim of that culture and that brainwashing,” Waddington says.
We had these Hungarian costume assistants literally spending weeks folding and ironing, folding and ironing making these dresses. It was torture for them but they came out beautiful. Students also gain from the John A. Paulson Center at NYU, which features two professional-grade theaters designed for productions and collaborations with students in graduate acting.
“He has this city lawyer look that he wears at the beginning of the film, and then you see him in this very jolly holiday look in Lisbon — which was my favorite look of his,” says Waddington, noting that as the character breaks down, so do his outfits. “So I wanted that to come through a little bit in the way that he dressed,” says Waddington, noting that his look was partially inspired by the siren suits worn by Winston Churchill during World War II. “I wanted [Baxter] to have a utilitarian quality to his clothes.
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And I’m a big lover of Busby Berkeley musicals and things like marching girls. I did meet Emma Stone in Athens too, because we were preparing during the pandemic. I’m in London and most of the cast is in America. Most of them were coming out two weeks before the shoot, and I knew that that wouldn’t really work for her character, because there was lots to think about.
I decided to forget that and go with my own dressing. Well-versed in the modern period drama with a twist, director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Favourite) had a simple edict for the costume design of Poor Things. As British costume designer Holly Waddington notes, “He didn’t want it to be like a period drama, he didn’t want it to be like a sci-fi film, and he didn’t want it to be too ‘fashiony.’ ” The result is Age of Innocence meets surrealism meets couture. Located in the charming city of Savannah, SCAD offers costume design studies in the School of Entertainment Arts’ production design program. The school’s innovative curriculum for 2023 prepares students for careers in TV, film, and live performance and the opportunity to work on the school’s latest sitcom, Tours and Attractions, which is filmed before a live audience and premiered at SCAD TVfest 2023. And the school’s first Collaborative Experience course in film and TV places students on professional productions shooting in Georgia’s multi-billion-dollar industry.
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
As Bella Baxter embraces her new chapter as a sex worker and plunges into the intellectual scene of Paris, her fashion sense takes a dramatic turn. Her wardrobe evolves alongside her, mirroring her growth and choices, especially as she ventures into the world of brothels. As Bella's journey unfolds, her attire evolves from a childlike persona to a sexually and politically liberated woman, symbolizing her progression toward agency and self-discovery.
Bella’s growth, while shown through Stone’s tremendous performance, both physically and emotionally, also manifests through her clothing throughout the film. The woman behind all those puffs and ruffles is costume designer Holly Waddington, who has worked on films like Lady Macbeth and the Hulu series The Great (created by Tony McNamara, who wrote Poor Things). Waddington, wearing a fabulous pair of earrings, talked to ELLE.com about working with Lanthimos and Stone on the film, how her own children inspired Bella, and the importance of texture. “I knew that Yorgos didn’t want this to look like a sci-fi or period film,” Holly Waddington, the wildly talented costume designer behind the looks, tells me in the wake of Poor Things’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Instead, she took inspiration from Victorian patterns with exaggerated silhouettes and breathed new life into them through the use of modern fabrics like plastic and latex.
There's this funny little woman with the bearded spherical cheeks that comes out and does a strange little dance on a black-and-white tile floor. I thought maybe it was a Freudian thing that people dream about little women being trapped behind radiators. It's grotesque and disturbing, and beautiful, and magical. Costume designer Holly Waddington was unconsciously preparing herself for Poor Things long before the project ever existed. After studying fine arts at Oxford, she landed a job at Angels Costumes House in London, the oldest costume supplier in the world.
So she isn’t ever properly dressed,” says Waddington. For the second chapter of the film, Bella leaves home with one of her suitors and is on her own — and dressing herself — for the first time. In the beginning of the film, Bella has the mental capacity of a child and is dressed by a housemaid.
“Poor Things” shot in Budapest during the pandemic and Waddington worked closely with a buyer in London to source a body of fabrics to fit the wide range of costumes and character personalities. I came up with a palette for the first part of the house, which was based on rotting apples, and that was Yorgos' idea. So he defined this color to me, which absolutely knocked me sideways when he said it to me.
With Broadway just a cab ride away, students with a keen interest in designing for the theater can benefit greatly from the MFA program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, housed in the Department of Design for Stage & Film. “Bella Style,” as Waddington calls it, comprises late-1800s Victorian with a contemporary bent and exaggerated silhouettes. While crop tops, ’30s-style underwear, flesh-colored blouses and an underpinning known as a bustle cage (which gave shape and volume to skirts) are just a few of the looks, the real standout — and one of the director’s favorites — is the big puffy sleeve. The annual Oscars celebrates film, cinematography and the artists who bring characters to life. This year, Jimmy Kimmel was invited to return as a host of the show for the fourth time. The list of presenters included Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Al Pacino, Jamie Lee Curtis and more.
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