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Olivia Wilde once called costume designer Arianne Phillips “one of the greatest costume designers in film history.” Phillips worked with Wilde on “Don’t Worry Darling,” and when it came to “The Invite,” the pair reunited
again.
When she got the call, Phillips immediately said yes to the film, which Wilde both directed and starred in. Phillips says of her collaborator, “Olivia has such a consistency in her vision; she’s such a great director to work with. She’s a bit of a unicorn because she has a very distinctive vision and point of view, yet she makes space to graciously take in everyone’s ideas.”
Their partnership didn’t end there. Wilde and Phillips also worked together on Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex.” In that film, Wilde stars as Erika Tracy, a sexually charged artist who turns her charm on Cooper Hoffman’s Elliot, a 23-year-old college grad who quickly succumbs to her sexual advances and lavish fantasies. Phillips says, “I would say this about Olivia: she is fearless. She’s brave as a director, but she’s equally very brave as an actor. She’s not self-conscious at all about her body.” Phillips adds, “I learned so much as someone who’s always been overly self-conscious. She’s really willing to try anything. There’s nothing she’s not willing to try.”
Here Phillips breaks down some of the key looks from both films and her experience working with Wilde.
‘The Invite’
As Phillips read the script by Will McCormick and Rashida Jones, it struck her how much it read like a play. “It’s such an ensemble piece; in terms of the rhythm of the story, it’s like opening an oyster,” she says.
The film is set over the course of one evening, which sharply limited the number of looks for the cast. Wilde stars as Angela, married to Joe, played by Seth Rogen. The pair are a married couple whose relationship is on thin ice. When they invite their “loud” upstairs neighbors, Pina (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), for an intimate dinner party, things take an unexpected turn.
Phillips faced a challenge: reducing down who the characters were. “I could help give story clues, and at the same time find costumes that would evolve over the course of the film,” she explains. “With Hawk and Pina, I didn’t want to set them up with any preconceptions. I wanted the audience to discover who they are in real time through the dialogue and the acting.”
In early meetings with Wilde, the film’s production designer Jade Healy and the film’s cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, Phillips understood how the doorways and windows created what she calls “beautiful framing.” She says, “I thought of the costumes like portraits or photographs and said, ‘What if we took portraits of them? What would we learn about them?’”
Angela and Joe
Crafting Angela’s look was a collaborative process with Wilde. Angela is a stay-at-home mom with artistic sensibility, Phillips says. “She’s a frustrated artist. She’s expressing herself through the way she decorates the home. We learn she found that rug at the flea market.” It later becomes a talking point between the couples and almost a point of contention for her husband, Joe.
But Angela had style, which Phillips describes as “really reminiscent of Diane Keaton, who was a goalpost for us.” She continues, “When I think of Diane Keaton, I think of this incredible eclectic personal style; I wanted Angela to emit that.” She continues, “The idea that she has a ‘40s blouse … she’s effortlessly stylish wearing overalls.”
Angela wears vintage cowboy boots with embroidery and a striped T-shirt with a 1940s jacket.
As for her main outfit, the original idea was to put her in pants so Wilde could have freedom to move. Then the idea of a mint green dress also came up, but the final outfit ended up being a mint green blouse. “It’s eclectic. I tried to express a lot through jewelry and accessories to give her a layer of personality. “She has mismatched earrings, and a 1970s Hermes Medor watch that was from my personal collection.” Phillips notes, “She’s nervous about the neighbors coming over. Olivia really loved the idea that her creative identity is so absorbed into the apartment that she blends into the walls.” She adds, ”Her blouse is buttoned up, so there’s a sense of presentation and appropriateness.”
Phillips says when it came to Joe, she wanted him to look like he just didn’t care. “Maybe Angela bought his clothes?” His style was more about comfort. She explains, “He is a semi-depressed guy who’s not fulfilled in his daily life.”
With Joe and Angela in near-matching color palettes, Phillips admits, “That was really challenging for me. I was fighting my own aesthetic. Normally, I would never put them both in blue-green tones next to each other because it clashed.” Phillips admits she felt tempted to change Rogen’s shirt, but after camera tests, she changed her mind. “I like the fact that they’re in a similar light palette, but it’s off and clashing because that shows the disconnect they’re having in their relationship. There’s no real color harmony.”
Pina and Hawk
As a sexologist, Phillips loosely based Pina on Esther Perel. “I didn’t want her to look like a textbook psychiatrist. We wanted her to have a sense of sexuality, and so that was really about silhouette.” The more audiences learn about Pina and her story, the more she takes her layers off. “She’s undressing more.”
Phillips noted how Cruz was expressive with her hands. Knowing how Wilde and Newport-Berra were going to shoot the film in a very intimate way, Phillips says, “I started with the idea of wanting her to have rings because rings were an opportunity to highlight her hands and catch light with the camera.” Phillips used rings from local L.A. designer Hillary Heydle. One ring that stood out was a pearl design. “Pearls are sexual for obvious reasons. Hillary also had a gold goddess ring with an imprint of a Botticelli-esque goddess. Pina also wore a lovely, sexy ear cuff from a designer I discovered online from Barcelona.”
Hawk had a masculine simplicity. Phillips says, “I like this idea of this macho guy wearing dark, subtle colors. It’s about his physique as an ex-fireman, and he takes his pants off, and he’s wearing like bright red underwear.” Phillips adds, “The only flourish I gave him was a beaded man bracelet, designed by Joseph Brooks, and his work has a bird logo tag. I thought the idea of hawk, bird, freedom worked.” She continues, “I believe that it is important to create costumes that help move the story and express who the characters are. So, even if there’s little things that the audience doesn’t see, they have it.
Costume Designer title card
In the film’s opening credits, Phillips is given a title card that comes early as opposed to much later.
When Phillips went to a cast and crew screening, she recalls almost falling out of her seat after seeing her name come up. She explains, “Traditionally, a costume designer comes after the editor and/or it’s around the music credit.” After the film, she approached the film’s producer Saul Germaine, who said, “That was on purpose. Olivia made sure of that, and I was just gobsmacked.’”
‘I Want Your Sex’
For Araki’s movie, Phillips went from a single costume with Wilde to an explosion of costumes.
T-shirt nods
In one scene, Elliot is wearing a vintage Madonna Rebel Heart Tour T-shirt. He wears it in bed as he masturbates. Phillips worked with Madonna for over 20 years, collaborating on tours, photo shoots, and music videos, as well as designing the costumes for Madonna’s “W.E.”
“Cooper’s character wears a lot of T-shirts, and for the masturbation scene, I thought, ‘We definitely have to have a good T-shirt there, and my first inclination was it should be Madonna.” Phillips continues, “She would think it’s hilarious. We had to have all kinds of paperwork and agreements, letting them know. I love that T-shirt because her name’s at the top. So yes, and Madonna approved it.”
Other T-shirts Phillips used were nods to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Phillips was the film’s costume designer and put Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) in a Spahn Ranch T-shirt.
Erika’s Madonna-Inspired Look
Knowing Araki’s body of work, Phillips knew the filmmaker liked color and wanted a sense of hyperrealism. “That was initially a challenge for Phillips because the colors associated with BDSM are typically black and metallic.”
Wilde and Phillips collaborated to discover Erika. “Olivia and I talked a lot about early Madonna, ‘Human Nature, the BDSM erotica, the ‘Sex’ book, and that whole Madonna era, which is right before I started working with her. In my 23 years of working with Madonna, we were touching on different BDSM looks, so I had a lot of resources.”
Phillips also rewatched “Eating Raoul” with Mary Woronov who plays a dominatrix housewife. Dita Von Teese’s burlesque act also served as another inspiration. “Olivia looks great in everything. So in a way, it’s always editing and editing and figuring out the tone.”
Co-designing with Monica Chamberlain
Phillips co-designed the film with costume designer Monica Chamberlain. She explains there was no prep time, no real budget and so many costumes. Phillips admits, “I knew I couldn’t do it alone, and the crew is small. Monica Chamberlain had been my assistant designer on a few films, and she wanted to co-design, and it’s important with people who you have relationships with who work on your crew to help them move up.” She adds, “It was really great generationally to co-design with someone younger than me.
“I took the lead with Erica, and she took the lead with Elliot, and then we cross-pollinated with everyone else, and it was just a great experience.”
Erika’s burgundy look was by Vex Clothing. Phillips explains, “You can’t get anything that’s more second skin or and has a sexuality to it, so we had to have some latex pieces. At this point, it’s almost redundant to have latex, but I thought that color was really good. It was an off color. It’s not every day you see a burgundy latex.”
Madonna
Having worked with Madonna for over two decades, Phillips says, “Madonna broke so many boundaries with what she was doing with the ‘Erotica’ album and her ‘Sex’ book, that it became part of the lexicon in a way. Before that, it was relegated to like porn, or you know, she kind of made it fashion.”
