Costuming Margaret Qualley in Love, Lust, and Grief Across Three Different Cities
Fashion
Fashion
Costume designer Jill Taylor spills the details on Margaret Qually’s stunning silk wedding dress, alongside the three vastly different wardrobes she costumed for her character in “Love of Your Life.”
“Love of Your Life” follows Maya (Margaret Qualley) across two relationships, one heartbreak, three cities, and approximately 90 costume changes. The costumes were designed by Jill Taylor, whose memory of costuming Qualley’s mother, Andie MacDowell, in the 2001 romcom “Crush” inspired her to take on the project. Taylor conceptualized the project of costuming Maya in three distinct categories: falling in love in Boston, grieving in Portugal, and coming out the other end in London. Naturally, each era of Maya’s life required vastly different pieces.
“[Qualley] is a cool girl, you could put a black plastic bag on her and she'd look amazing, so the trick was to have her look amazing, but real as well,” Taylor says. She opted for brands that would realistically be in a young professional’s arsenal, like Anthropologie, Free People, and Qualley’s personal favorite, Brandy Melville. To supplement the vintage graphic tees Taylor sourced around London, Qualley brought her own vintage Levi’s to set, which saved the costume designer the frustration of having to source a perfect-fitting pair of jeans.
Falling in Love in Boston
Maya is introduced to the viewer, and her future husband, Charlie (Gabriel Basso), as a reserved ER nurse with a non-traditional childhood. Meanwhile, Charlie bears the ease and casualness of a classic American ‘golden retriever’ boyfriend, to borrow TikTok slang. In keeping with the character’s charm, and the actor’s real-life cowboy roots, Taylor styled Charlie in vintage Levi’s 501. “He had to look attractive but not considered,” Taylor says. As Charlie’s relationship with Maya progresses, his boyish simplicity wears off on her aesthetic, albeit in a more girlish direction. “It was important that I saw her relax into her great love affair,” Taylor says, progressively styling Maya in girly garments as she falls deeper in love with Charlie. “I wanted her to look like a young girl in love.”
Gabriel Basso and Margaret Qualley in "Love of Your Life."
Prime Video
The Boston closet is the youngest and flirtiest of the three. Taylor filled it with vintage pieces that a nurse could feasibly have sourced around the city, including vintage menswear. One of the costume designer’s favorite looks is her crushed raspberry cords, checkered shirt, and vintage baseball jacket that Maya wears on an early date, demonstrating a more masculine and uptight iteration of her style, which slowly gives way to looser and more feminine silhouettes, like cotton blouses and silk sundresses.
“She's a very pragmatic, practical person, but as she's falling in love with Charlie, she's becoming a little bit more girly. She's not trying, but it's reflecting her state of mind,” Taylor says. When Maya meets Charlie’s parents for the first time, she wears a butter yellow V-neck midi dress from Claudie Pierlot paired with a vintage green suede jacket. “We tried to have a happy wardrobe for her,” Taylor says.
On her wedding day, Maya stuns her party guests in a satin bias-cut wedding dress chosen for its proximity to 1930s silhouettes. After dress shopping at Portobello Market in London and admiring the selection of vintage night dresses, Taylor gravitated toward modern-day dresses reminiscent of the ’30s and ’70s silhouettes she saw thrifting. The lucky winner emerged from Rixo, a London-based dress brand that conceptualizes itself as “future vintage.” “It was universal, everybody loved the dress. And the most important thing is Margaret loved it,” Taylor says of the Rixo Bridal Amari gown, priced at a modest $430.
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Sex, Love, and Grief in Portugal
In the wake of Charlie’s death, Maya’s grief sends her into a pattern of dressing for the male gaze and casual hookups. “She was grieving, but she was out there in the public market, so to speak,” Taylor says, explaining her decision to dress Maya for a male audience. In one such look, she wears a black velvet mini dress with lace detailing, paired with heavy eyeliner and two layered teardrop necklaces.
Margaret Qualley in "Love of Your Life."
Prime Video
“When we pick her up in Lisbon, there's a hardness to her. She's developed a shell, and when we first pick her up on the tram and she's in the shorts, black top and biker boots, it's a tougher vibe,” Taylor says. Maya’s style shifts once more when she joins Felix, her new lover, on a work trip to the Algarve region of Portugal. “Once Maya gets involved with Felix, [her style] softens. She's letting go again,” Taylor says, mimicking her previous feminine choices in the Boston chapter with more of a coastal vacation flair.
Taylor’s favorite piece from this chapter was a vintage Ozzie Clark halter dress adorned in yellow and orange flowers. “The Algarve was gonna be lighter, more colourful. She was coming out of her shell and this was her opportunity to sort of show it,” Taylor says. By the end of Maya’s travels and whirlwind love affair with Felix, she has self-actualized into a sophisticated career woman, wearing more self-assured silhouettes like blouses, blazers, and shoulder bags.
