Big Bold Costume Choices in ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’
Fashion
Fashion
Costume designer Arjun Bhasin talks about his inspirations behind the clothing for Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell in director Kogonada's ode to Technicolor.
“It's called ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,’” says Arjun Bhasin, the costume designer of Kogonada’s majestic ode to old Hollywood-style romance. “So to be very clear, distinct, specific, and succinct, I'm gonna make very big choices. I'm gonna make bold choices.”
Unfolding in vibrant Technicolor, the story follows David (Colin Farrell) and Sarah (Margot Robbie) — singletons from the same unnamed city in an undetermined year — as they also take a chance [or leap?] and jump into a sweeping adventure. They first catch each other’s eye during a rain-soaked wedding ceremony. David internalizes his feelings in a buttoned-up blue Brioni suit and Sarah intrigues in a crimson custom-made velvet blazer — thus introducing their signature color palettes. “She's unpredictable and she's angry. I like the idea of red saying, ‘Stop! Get away from me. And David is blue,” says Bhasin, who kept the duo’s primary colors mostly consistent throughout. “I wanted to feel like these people were trapped in their lives.”
Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie in "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey." Credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Bhasin kept the duo’s trademark primary colors mostly consistent throughout, while dropping in or blending hues that hint at their emotional arcs. After an introduction by the bride, Sarah turns down David’s suggestion of a drink. Later, when she takes a dance break and corners David, who’s hiding from the crowd in the rainy courtyard. Sarah has shed her blazer to reveal a red-and-blue striped blouse and pants set, also custom. “It was all this back and forth,” says Bhasin, illustrating the steamy tension between the two. “When they push each other aside, they go back to their blue self or their red self.”
David and Sarah leave the wedding separately. But fate — as embodied by a GPS inspired by HAL from ”2001: A Space Odyssey” and an ‘80s Nintendo joystick — unites them for a magical road trip with pit stops in pivotal and traumatic moments throughout their lives.
David takes the wheel in a classic, casual-cool blue suede bomber jacket and dark navy trousers. Sitting shotgun, Sarah feels free-spirited and adventurous in a mix of decades: a red-striped blazer custom-designed to evoke a mid-century men’s smoking jacket, ‘'60s-style boyfriend jeans that are cropped and cuffed just below the knee, and ‘'70s-referential suede stacked-heel boots. She carries an architectural, but relaxed slouch bag by Khaite. “There’s a vagueness to everything,” says Bhasin, supporting the movie’s time- and location-agnostic script. “So we didn't want [the costumes] to feel super contemporary.”
Like Kogonada and production designer, Katie Byron, Bhasin referenced a profusion of classics, like Jacques Demy’s color-saturated 1954 musical, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (which “La La Land” also drew upon) and “a lot of Claudette Colbert and Claude Gable.” (The primary color-filled “West Side Story,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” and “Singin’ in the Rain” posters in Sarah’s 12-year-old bedroom actually came later in the production as “a happy accident,” Bhasin explains.) “Kogonada wanted the movie to feel like an old-fashioned love story from the ‘30s or the ‘40s,” says Bhasin, who previously worked with the director and Farrell, in “After Yang.” “It was this idea of two people stuck in a rut and trying to get out of it, but couldn't.”
For Sarah’s alluring, vintage-inspired aesthetic, Bhasin looked to Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 French New Wave classic, “Contempt,” and fashion icon Jane Birkin. For David’s mysteriously dashing layering, Bhasin took inspiration from the oeuvre of French New Wave heartthrob Jean-Paul Belmondo — especially the 1960 film “Breathless.” “In the beginning, David’s in that big trench coat, and he looks Belmondo-esque,” says Bhasin. “We were just playing with stuff that felt classic and timeless.”
David and Sarah reach individual breakthroughs after confronting crushing and defining events in their past. Coming together in the enlightened moment, they change their outfits — and colors. Sitting on a towering observation deck looking down upon earth, David, in a cozy, chunky brown Buck Mason knit, kisses Sarah, resplendent in a voluminous, puff-sleeve marigold Acne cardigan. “They met in the middle of the spectrum where she was abandoning her red and he was abandoning his blue,” says Bhasin.
Up in the clouds, the duo imagines a redo — or maybe relive an alternate timeline — of the earlier wedding. They attend together, as a supportive, blissful couple united through their cohesive warm neutrals. In a woolly gray-beige Prince of Wales check blazer, David embraces and dances with a content Sarah, in a much more exposed golden velvet halter Proenza Schouler gown, with a Y-detail down a plunge back. “It’s also a lot more tactile and they're touching, and kissing a lot, and they're together,” says Bhasin. “She's not putting up a barrier to him.”
The style and formality of Sarah’s gown also conveys a traditional and celebratory sentiment toward marriage — as opposed to the previous unconventional pajama-like ensemble and presumably thrifted men’s blazer with blasé, rolled-up sleeves. “She's an ‘I don't give a shit about weddings’ kind of girl and she's just there to have fun,” says Bhasin. “Neither of them particularly believes in the institution of marriage. They're more changed when they get to the second wedding.”
David and Sarah must decide which route to take from here, literally and figuratively. Her red Ralph Lauren kick flares, paired with the marigold sweater, allude to crashing back into self-destructive cycles. ”It was the turning point in the movie,” says Bhasin. “It feels like they could go either way.”
Like a classic Hollywood romance, David and Sarah ultimately find their ways back to each other. A full color swap symbolizes their love and acceptance of each other’s true selves. David, in a red fine-knit polo, sips coffee on his blue-door stoop as an assured Sarah arrives on his doorstep. She’s in a blue denim blazer, with contrast striping, by India-based Eleven Eleven. “That was the moment where we felt like, ‘Oh, they really are going to give each other a chance,” says Bhasin. “It's going to happen.”
