Warning: Spoilers for After the Hunt below
In Luca Guadagnino’s psychological thriller After the Hunt, nothing is black and white, except for the suits. The director’s latest film comes on the heels of a prolific year in which he premiered both Challengers and Queer with costumes Jonathan Anderson. But for After the Hunt, the Italian auteur reunited with costume designer and Céline’s head of knitwear, Giulia Piersanti, for a lesson in collegiate stylings and academia-chic tailoring.
Piersanti and Guadagnino have a long history of creative partnership: the pair previously worked together on five of the director’s projects: A Bigger Splash (2015), Call Me By Your Name (2017), Suspiria (2018), We Are Who We Are (2020), and Bones and All (2022). It’s a relationship based on “years of friendship and trust,” Piersanti tells W, speaking after Paris Fashion Week. “It usually starts with Luca talking me through his characters and intentions for them. From then on, I am free to research and create moodboards to share ideas.”
For the provocative After the Hunt, Piersanti put together an enviable wardrobe of classic suits, smart button-ups, and luxurious jewelry. The twisty film stars Julia Roberts as Alma, an esteemed philosophy professor at Yale who is plunged into crisis when her protégée, star student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), makes an accusation of sexual assault against Alma’s colleague and close friend, Hank (Andrew Garfield). From monochrome suits to unbuttoned shirts, Piersanti’s work is in dialogue with Alma’s internal struggle. Below, the Italian costume designer shares how she styled these A-listers for the university setting, breaking down her looks for the film’s central trio.
Alma (Julia Roberts)
Alma is equal parts scholar and aesthete. Of dressing Roberts, Piersanti says, “She just made everything look so good while bringing her amazing performance to life.” There is an effortlessness to Alma’s look, exemplified in an early scene as she hosts a soirée in her elegant New England home in an all-white suit by Totême. This first impression was paramount for Piersanti: “This is the moment before the storm in which we see Alma as she is in her everyday life, with this confident allure.”
Alma practically glows in her white suit during the evening dinner, standing out against the darker hues of the room. Two specific images inspired Piersanti: “One of Camilla Nickerson and one of Tina Chow, women whose iconic and timeless style I admire, both in white suits.” However, once Maggie comes forward with her accusation, the spotless purity of the Totême suit is never seen again.
“As her character comes undone, her clothes come undone a little, less controlled,” Piersanti explains. Alma’s stark monochrome morphs into cream shirts, gray sweaters, and wide-cut jeans, caught in the polarizing space between Hank and Maggie. Within the Ivy League setting, there are also sprinkles of Piersanti’s Céline, including a houndstooth blazer (“I was looking for that fabric, and I knew that we had a lot of those in the collection… I couldn’t find a better one!” she says).
Piersanti’s vision of Alma repeatedly came back to clean lines and a very focused wardrobe of classic garments. “A woman who chooses few pieces, with classic good taste of an intellectual who knows what’s tasteful and practical at the same time,” she says of Alma’s style. Even Alma’s pajamas are a tasteful matching co-ord set. One unchanging part of Alma’s look is her gold magnifying glass pendant necklace by jewelry designer Ilaria Icardi, a nod to looking beyond what first meets the eye. “It’s a piece I originally wanted to purchase for myself,” Piersanti laughs. “My friend Ilaria has a very curated line, only a few pieces per year. I said we really needed that piece!”
Ultimately, Alma’s style is timeless. “I don’t think there are trends in the costumes of this film,” Piersanti notes of her styling. “Alma could be in different periods, and maybe the fit would change, but the elements would remain.’
Maggie (Ayo Edebiri)
Alma and Maggie’s initially cozy teacher-student relationship becomes complicated when Maggie’s accusation is raised, and tension between them only intensifies throughout the film. As if trying to gain control, Maggie subtly copies Alma’s style—a similar suit silhouette, matching black nail polish, and a replication of Alma’s necklace with a ring on a chain—until it becomes blatant enough that Alma calls her out on it. “Luca expressed from the beginning that he wanted Maggie to emulate Alma,” Piersanti says of her starting point for the character.
For Piersanti, creating two complementary but separate sets of costumes was a process of isolating wardrobe staples. After building Alma’s closet, she researched current student and street style: “I was trying to shop for a younger version of what Alma would wear, a clumsier version, even though Maggie knows how to get her look.” In a scene of confrontation between the pair, the imitation is clear. A blazer signals Alma’s maturity, while Maggie’s youth is indicated by a denim shirt; both outfits have a layered effect, but one is more appropriate for the professor and the student, respectively.
Among the rest of the student body, Maggie remains distinct. There are masculine accents to her preppy college attire, including light brown pleated shorts, one of Piersanti’s favourite items. Maggie may not be as sharp as Alma, but she’s caught between being a college student and the daughter of wealthy parents. “She definitely doesn’t try to show off, and that was important,” Piersanti adds of Maggie’s casual cardigans and plain white T-shirts, noting the silhouette and brands she wears are not high-end.
Then, in a coda-finale of confrontation, we see a transformation. Maggie and Alma reunite after a few years have passed. “The last scene shows some sort of aftermath after the storm, and I wanted the two women face-to-face to look very different,” Piersanti explains. While Alma appears in a cozy Céline sweater, Maggie’s alteration is more significant: her look is softer, less academic, wearing a printed Wales Bonner dress with jewelry, and her hair pulled back. “We wanted a real change in Maggie to show how she did not imitate Alma anymore and maybe came to terms with her own self, or simply moved on to imitating someone else in her present life,” Piersanti notes of her farewell to Edebiri’s character.
Hank (Andrew Garfield)
All of After the Hunt’s characters undergo a metamorphosis, but none is more chaotic than that of Hank, who ultimately comes completely apart at the seams. From charming professor to troubled outcast, Hank’s decline is reflected in his style, which becomes increasingly disheveled. “Hank’s inspiration was a young Harrison Ford in his home, very casual,” Piersanti says of the character’s moodboard. “Hank comes from a different background and plays his good looks and nonchalance to his advantage, until, of course, it isn’t…”
As a result, Hank is almost always in denim jeans. Even at Alma’s soirée, he’s wearing dark denim as he drapes himself across the furniture, shoes on the couch. Opposite Alma’s white suit, it looks like they’re attending two entirely separate events. “He’s wearing what he wears every day. He just makes the fake effort of putting on a blazer,” Piersanti notes of the scene.
While nearly every After the Hunt character’s wardrobe is composed of similar ingredients—“blazers, button-downs, pants, loafers, there’s never a heel!”—Hank is the outlier. “I tried to keep him quite New England, East Coast,” Piersanti explains of his wardrobe staples: dark green and blue shirts tucked into jeans with a leather belt. Hank’s fall from grace is further communicated through styling. The buttons of his shirt disappear along with his sanity, and his rolled-up sleeves, revealing a bicep tattoo, add to his rugged demeanour. Piersanti furthers: “With Hank, he doesn’t go home much; he’s quite homeless and in a crisis. I didn’t necessarily do anything more than just make him messier and just…unbuttoned.”
However, Garfield’s Hank is not the only man whom Piersanti loved dressing. “I really like the sharp wardrobe choices made for Michael Stuhlbarg’s character,” she noted, needing him to be an equally sophisticated other half for Alma as her long-suffering husband. “I chose Japanese designers like Comoli and Aurelee, who have very clean lines and fabrics so different from what we use in Europe.” Styling him in Comme des Garçons shirts with no tie, in looks inspired by Philip Glass and David Lynch, was a departure from the typical academic corduroy jacket with elbow patches. He perfectly complements Alma, like Maggie and Hank once did. Piersanti’s costume design proves there’s much more to After the Hunt than meets the eye.
Source: W Magazine
Be First to Comment