From “The Devil Wears Prada”, opens in new tab to “House of Gucci,” the fashion industry has long served as fodder for film, but rarely has it been treated with the earnestness exhibited in “Couture,” the first film to be allowed shooting access inside the atelier de Chanel. The drama follows American filmmaker Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie) through her preparations for shooting a project for Paris Fashion Week while dealing with a new cancer diagnosis. Throughout the film, Walker’s life intersects with a myriad of behind-the-scenes talent as she grapples with her own mortality, including high fashion model Ada, played by real-life model Anyier Anei.

To bring a true-to-life portrayal of the fashion industry to screen, filmmaker Alice Wincour spent a year and a half studying Chanel's backstage operations. “I was arriving [to Paris Fashion Week] at 5 am with the models and glam team,” Wincour says, “so I  wrote the film with all those encounters in mind.” Despite never showing the house’s iconic interlocking logo, Wincour conceptualizes Chanel as a true collaborator in the project. Many of the actors in the film are real models that she had met through the house during fashion week. “There are a lot of films that got funding from Maison de Couture, but 'Couture' was really a work we did together,” Wincour says. 

Backstage, Wincour met with Chanel seamstresses to better understand the labor behind high fashion, likening their dresses-in-making to bodies. “Each dress was a corpse, like Frankenstein,” Wincour says, “you could see the making of the dress, so we worked with this idea to have a prayer Raphaelite vibe in the costume.” One of the film’s most notable fashion moments occurs in the final scene, where Ada sports a veiled white mini dress based on one of Chanel’s archived collections. Collaborating with costume designer Pascaline Chavanne, Wincour sought to evoke a “fairytale atmosphere” evocative of Chanel without having to use the name or logo. 

The resulting fashion show consists of replicated black and white Chanel runway outfits based on original collections from a handful of seasons. Ada walks the outdoor runway in billowing white sleeves with diamond-encrusted buttons and a black bow, evocative of the house code. “At first, I thought of the fashion show as more horror because Maxine was a horror movie director, but this was not really true to the spirit of the house, and it had to be more like a fairy tale,” Wincour says. 

An additional challenge for Wincour was selecting clothing that would translate effectively on camera during the storm. Knowing that every garment would be drenched in rain, Wincour and Chavanne chose silhouettes that would become even more visually striking when soaked. While the models brave the elements in matching sheer ensembles, Maxine juxtaposes their stark whiteness in a black leather coat, complemented by gray knitted fingerless gloves and a hood.

“It was a kind of limbo atmosphere, between life and death,” Wincour says, dressing Maxine in all black to symbolize death and Ada in white as a force of life, reminiscent of Ophelia. Using the same dress documented in early stages in the atelier as Ada’s final look, the outfit operates as a metaphor for life. In the background, the Isle of the Dead by Rachmaninoff sets the tone for the show.

Wincour initially conceptualized Maxine as a styleless character, to which Jolie encouraged her to give the character a gothic flair in line with her oeuvre as a filmmaker. The character’s signature sleek leather jacket and monochrome outfits were modeled off a combination of Wincour and Jolie’s personal styles. Jolie kept many of her own tattoos in her portrayal of Maxine while adding new ones over the more intimate ones, allowing Jolie to be “naked emotionally” while making tattoos part of the costume.