Late last month, actress and director Greta Gerwig took a stroll through the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the New York Times, pointing out the works that inspired her new film adaption of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Little Women, which follows four young sisters in 19th-century Massachusetts as they struggle to meet—and defy—the expectations placed on them by post-Civil War society.
Stopping by an 1870 Winslow Homer painting of three women on a beach, Gerwig said: “Those are my girls. Don’t they just look like girls that you know?”
Indeed, many of the costumes used in the film come directly out of paintings, as costume designer Jacqueline Durran told InStyle magazine. In particular, Durran mentioned a work by Winslow Homer depicting two boys in a field, which helped shape the dress worn by one of the film’s characters, Jo.
Another character, Amy, wears a dress based on the lace and frilled frocks worn by women in Manet’s Impressionist-era works. And Meg’s ethereal wardrobe is drawn from Pre-Raphaelite paintings, like those by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Sir John Everett Millais.
“Clothes are part of the girls’ journey into the world, part of their creation of themselves as characters,” Durran said.
Below, see some of the artworks cited by Gerwig and Durras, alongside production stills from the movie.
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