Director Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film Poor Things tells the fantastical tale of a young woman, played by Emma Stone, who’s brought back to life by Willem Dafoe’s mad scientist. It’s the stuff of gothic horror, woven with the Greek filmmaker’s winking absurdism, as the movie follows our lead Bella Baxter from her rebirth in the 1880s through her self-awakening. Key to that storytelling isn’t just Lanthimos’s surreal scene-setting, but the film’s lavishly eccentric costuming, overseen by designer Holly Waddington.
“I was really encouraged by Yorgos to just go big,” the costume designer told the Motion Pictures Association of her work on the film. “What we ended up with had a lot to do with texture—big textures in the clothing, things that felt organic, things that felt inflated.”
Now, Waddington’s costumes have made their way off-screen and into a showcase at the ASU FIDM Museum in Los Angeles. Organized by Searchlight Pictures, “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” arrays 13 costumes from the film, including eight worn by Stone, and others by her co-stars including Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, and Ramy Youssef.
Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things (2023). Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
To the museum’s curator Kevin Jones, these pieces, while recognizably “historic,” present a blend of styles to create “looks that are not pedantic.” In an email, he brings up “leg-‘o’-mutton sleeves mixed with go-go boots, lobster-tail bustles worn as outerwear, and reconfigurations of Madeleine Vionnet and Charles James eveningwear.”
This interplay of styles emerged from Lanthimos’s and Waddington’s vast body of references for the film. According to her, they included Victorian designs as much as nods to the 1960s space age. The works of Otto Dix, Egon Schiele, Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Singer Sargent also served as inspirations. Waddington’s use of period-appropriate fabrics were additionally woven with contemporary techniques—an, ahem, Frankenstein-esque mix-and-match that nailed the movie’s otherworldliness.
Emma Stone in Poor Things (2023). Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
Among the pieces in the exhibition are a paper silk ensemble cut into a mermaid silhouette (what Waddington calls a “weird bustle cage“) that nods to Bella’s awakening youth, and an eye-poppingly yellow Victorian evening gown, complete with pointed sleeves, that marks her sexual liberation.
Jones himself highlights Bella’s first outfit, a lush blue creation, which mirrors the waters out of which she is rescued by Dafoe’s character, as well as a bronze satin day gown that “blends into the wood paneling of her husband’s chateau—sartorially imprisoning her just as he is trying to physically.”
“Each costume is a character unto itself that reflects the actor’s circumstance, and subtly reveals to movie-goers the hero’s or villain’s course of action,” he said. “How much costume detail is lost on screen, or how the colors or patterns enhance or subdue the believability of the storyline is evident in the exhibition.”
See more images from the show below.
Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
“Poor Things Costume Exhibit” is on view at the ASU FISM Museum, 919 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California, through December 15.
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