My obsession with the saga of Emily and Stephanie was reignited with a hat. Not just any hat—the biggest hat. In the first teaser dropped for Paul Feig’s Another Simple Favor, there is one quick image of Blake Lively trotting down a picturesque staircase with a gargantuanly fabulous chapeau on her head. She wears it like she’s going to pop out to a bodega for some fruit. It’s an incredible sight.
“Somebody must have done that in the ’40s,” costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus says. “That staircase? That hat? Something like that to have happened.”
I consider 2018’s A Simple Favor to be a benchmark in contemporary costume design. Kalfus’ designs give us something to aspire to, but it goes beyond that. Our curiosity perks up because we need to know how the silhouette of her pants of her tuxedo cuffs lend itself to the story. The mystery of both films is only enhanced by the clothing that comes from everyone’s closets.
“Blake’s character is so provocative but, at the same time, we ask, ‘What are you doing?'” she says. “There is this built-in tension between her and Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie, who would just prefer to be a bystander, especially in this new film. When the costumes get to raise to that tension and banter, it’s a recipe for something out-of-this-world. And Blake can’t get enough, and she flourishes. I mean, who wears a tuxedo to work? Emily can.”
Kalfus has worked with Feig on several projects including Jackpot!, Last Christmas, and the upcoming Housemaid, starring Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar. The director is known for his large comedies, but he balances character above anything else—something Kalfus enjoys.
“Costume designers, in a way, can be seen as some of the original influencers,” she says. “When I met Paul, I was doing some heightened work, and it was all very character-driven. I always want the costumes to be alive, you know? His movies are really about allowing the audience to have a good time, and he let me really go for it. There is something very liberating about joining a team where that is the focus. I can take liberty and make things a little bigger or make the clothes a little tighter in order to provoke.”
When Emily returns to Stephanie’s life, her first outfit makes an impression. Newly released from prison, she sports a striped, light grey outfit that can only be seen as jailbird chic. Her silver earrings resemble handcuffs, the pants are wide, and the chain around her waist hints at being on a chain gang. It’s intelligent, cheeky, and referential.
“I thought a jailbird look reference would be great,” Kalfus says. “This is my first sequel, so this was the first time that I had a chance to re-introduce a character back to the audience. I designed all the trousers to be gigantic and wide with this almost Chanel fabric. She’s trouble. Because she was marrying into the mob, I had to do a gangster look, and, of course, she had to change upon arrival in Capri. That’s who Emily is. For that first look, that’s when, as a designer, you have a chance to hit on something that’s classically in our brains. You can recognize it and name it immediately, so people are affected by it.”
We are invited to Capri, of course, to attend Emily’s wedding to the dangerously handsome Dante, played by Michele Morrone. If you think Emily wants people to look at her when she’s picking up her kids from school, what do you think she is going to wear as she struts down the aisle? Her wedding dress is unlike anything you’ve ever seen with a sculpted latex bodice and the train to end all trains. And, yes, you saw that blood red trim correctly.
“Emily wants to intimidate,” she says. “I was really going for silhouette throughout this film. I wanted to make that wedding dress as big as I could–it was forty feet long. It’s about the length of a city block, but then the blood red trail at the end had crystals on it. Well-placed, thought-out costumes can be a harbinger of what is to come. Our DP, John Schwartzman, knows how to linger on clothes.”
In the years between Emily’s arrest and her return, Stephanie has come into her own, but how does that manifest in her clothing? Kalfus notes that the way that Stephanie travels and the way Emily travels are completely different, and you may notice that Stephanie’s clothing features accents of blue in a lot of her outfits. When she sees a crime being committed (martini in hand, natch) she is wearing a shiny blue coat, and there is a blue ribbon accent in her hair during the rehearsal dinner.
“Anna and I spoke a lot about how Stephanie was reluctant to go on this trip,” Kalfus says. “Stephanie is going, but she’s downplaying everything. She is defiantly not doing something glamorous, and that acts as a foil to Emily and adds to the tension. Blake is going through this unbelievable parade of costume changes while Stephanie is fascinated but she’s not smitten with the idea of going to Italy. You have to remember, though, that Stephanie will dress appropriately, and she packed two or three sensational outfits.”
What does Emily wear to the rehearsal dinner, you ask? Oh, just a couture, sculpted top with teal ostrich feathers as far as the eye can see.
“That was Tamara Ralph couture,” she says, with such delight that I understood how major it was. “Straight off the runway, and we were able to get our hands on a few of those. That sculpted rose piece weigh a lot, and I asked Blake how she would feel about it since it was about two and a half days of shooting. It’s one thing to wear something on the runway, but it’s entirely something else to shoot a film in it.”
Henry Golding’s Sean has a different outlook. You wouldn’t think that he would even come to Europe given what happened in the first film, and his attitude has become angrier. The patterned shirts he sports in Another indicate how his character may shop different for casual wear.
“Those were some stunning Ralph Lauren costumes,” Kalfus says. “I wanted him to counteract how sour he because by continuing to show his beauty and handsomeness. I wanted the audience to wonder, ‘What happened to him?’ and he was very interested in playing that up.”
If I somehow stumbled onto set and decided to raid the costume department (very Versano family behavior), I would swipe everything from Emily’s hat to Stephanie’s striped sweater. Kalfus would go a different route.
“Honestly, I do love all of it, especially because we shot the film in Capri, she says. “But I don’t think like that, oddly. I’m onto the next. I got to make things at Tirelli Costumi, which is the place to make costumes–there is so much history there. I believe Elizabeth Taylor was fit for Cleopatra there, and it’s filled with so many cinematic history. We shot in Cinecittà Studios, which is like the quintessential Roman studio. I feel like I would take away the reference of being on location. If I could take anything I wanted, I would go into the fabric store and take as much fabric as I possibly could. It’s so inspiring and gorgeous.”
Another Simple Favor is streaming now on Prime Video.
