CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, November 07, 2018

Suspiria’s Costume Designer Explains 10 of the Film’s Looks

www.vulture.com: If you’re a film lover with a soft constitution, there are a few scenes of virtuoso violence in Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria that might warn you off the picture entirely. But we encourage you to at least try and gut out (pun definitely intended!) this 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s signature film from 1977, because not only is it a timely, provocative horror picture about an entirely feminine micro-society that revolves around dance and witchcraft, it’s also about 150 minutes of straight-up clothing porn.

4 comments:

Elizabeth P said...

Suspiria is an unique horror film, about an American dance student going to join a company overseas, but who quickly finds that the company is fronting for something far more sinister. I will admit, I've made it through about a third of the original Italian film before quitting, because it is, as I said before, unique. The story is just one of the elements that aid to the horror of it all, the soundtrack, and design is a heavy part of it. There is a lot of pressure on designers of movie "remakes" to retain the original spirit of the film, but also bring something new to the table. However, after reading this article it seems that the costume designer Giulia Piersanti has done this very successfully. One of the things I really am admiring about Piersanti is how in attentive they are to the character backstory, and how, visually through physical design that can be represented. This also means that is significant when a character like Susie transitions from her "hometown American" to more, what I will call "powerful woman." They are telling a story not just through dialogue and action, but through physical appearance as well. I would also like to comment on the actual dance costumes for "Volk" as I think they are striking and beautiful. There's something so simple about the concept, but something so meaningful in the bold color.

Yma Hernandez-Theisen said...

As a big fan of the original film (I own it on DVD) Jordan Crucchiola Article “Suspiria Costume Designer Explains 10 of the Film’s Chic Looks”, felt like a must read. I have yet to see the most recent adaptation, so I’d thought this article could give me more insight into if I should or not. I loved how Piersanti acknowledged the limitless and expansiveness this film has to offer a creative team, especially a costume designer. As jordan quotes her as saying “I was able to go all-out and bring inspiration from many of the artists and designers and historic things that inspire me and make all the bespoke pieces aI wanted”. She says the looks she designed for suspiria could fill out a generously sized coffee table book, which I would actually love to see. Besides this hypothetical coffee table book I would love to see Luca’s Suspiria, and maybe rewatch Dario Argento’s fim too. From some of the pictures given and the way Piersanti described her clothing design process, I think I will try to go out of my way to watch the remake.

Kelly Simons said...

I was a trailer for Suspiria while I was watching Youtube. Usually I skip ads to get to my chosen video, but when I watched the few opening moments of the trailer I stayed for the whole thing. I was enraptured with what I was seeing, both the story that I was trying to suss out from the trailer, but also I stayed for the visuals. The costumes from the trailer were so lovely. I am very interested in seeing Suspiria, I cannot believe that I had not heard of it until a week or so ago. The trailers make the film seem terrifying, like a better Black Swan. I mean, Black Swan was a pretty good film to begin with, so I can imagine what Suspiria will turn out to be. Looking at the costumes from this article I have a feeling that my suspicions may be correct. Just from the few included photos I am very impressed with the costume designer's work.

Sophie Nakai said...

I have never seen this film and I don't particularly intend to because I am a wimp and hate horror in any form, but I do love costumes. Reading this article was really interesting because the costume designer took what could have been regular boring costumes and gave them a lot of meaning and depth that is not necessarily apparent from just looking at the photos. She has a much more developed sense of the world and how people present themselves with clothes than I do and it was really interesting to read about her perspective and choices for this film. I would love to learn more about her costuming for other films because I think she's super cool and I would love to learn more from her. I also think that it is cool that she worked on Call Me By Your Name because I love that film and the costumes for that are so vastly different than the ones in this article.