It probably goes without saying that Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard could wear garbage bags and still look unattainably attractive, so when they’re throw in a sweeping romantic WWII drama full of beautiful backdrops and stunning costumes, it’s safe to say you get one hell of a gorgeous film.
Allied, which opens in cinemas on Boxing Day, stars Brad Pitt as Max Vartan, an army intelligence officer, and Marion Cotillard as Marianne Beausejour, a French resistance fighter. Set to the backdrop of WWII, these two military operatives find themselves falling in love while pretending to be a couple in Morocco. Separated and then reunited in London, it seems like they are headed for domestic bliss before fate intervenes.
When the trailer dropped earlier this year, it wasn’t just the chemistry between Pitt and Cotillard that created buzz, but equally attention grabbing was the 1940s period piece costumes with their old school sense of style and glamour. From the classically tailored three piece suits worn by Pitt to Cotillard’s impressive collection of slinky evening wear, it’s the characters’ outfits that steal the scene in this tale of wartime double-crosses, duplicity and romantic intrigue.
The architect of this fabulous costume design, Academy Award nominated Joanna Johnston, has been making the rounds in the press and sharing her design process. Johnston insists that interpretation is key, as the idea is to paint an appealing picture rather than create a totally accurate historical document meant to be studied in history class. Rather than sticking steadfastly to the grit and economic realities of the 1940s, Johnston chose to seamlessly blend the vintage fashion aesthetics of the war era with some ‘definition, a bit of a gloss’ to make the characters seem like principals in an old school hollywood glamour film.
She explained to Grazia, “in this quite heightened world, the costumes sit fine in the 1940s, but they’re not 100 percent perfect 1940s styles, they have something which is agreeable to today’s eye. It’s not otherworldly. I like the fact that you can appeal to an audience through the clothing – that an audience can look at a film and go, “Oh, I’d love to wear that dress.”
In fact, it would be quite impossible to leave the cinema without coveting at least one of Cotillard’s incredible costume pieces. Particularly eye catching is a pale green evening gown worn at an opulent embassy cocktail party that becomes a full on siege. As Johnston explains to Town and Country, “I wanted to her to be very goddess-like. I wanted her to be strong and soft. So it has strength in the construction at the top, but it’s a fluid fabric. She’s got enough to move and run and do what she’s meant to do in this scene.”
In other words, not only is this a dress you can channel an old school Hollywood screen siren in, but also one in which you can kick some serious ass. This is a serious modern day style statement about blending beauty and functionality. Also, is this the best wartime green evening gown since Keira Knightley’s in Atonement? You tell us.
Of course, the actual costume design and production takes months of painstaking work and research. Any callbacks or references to the 1940s and old school Hollywood glamour are not incidental; rather they are carefully curated. Johnston spent hours dissecting and drawing inspiration from Hollywood noir classics such as Casablanca, To Have and Have Not and Voyager as well as studying famous style icons of the day such as Katherine Hepburn and Gary Cooper among others.
In a film about the crossing of wartime and romantic allegiances, deceit and betrayal, Pitt and Cotillard are today’s Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. We can’t wait to see what costumes we can adapt for our wardrobes.
