In A24’s latest dramedy, an unhappily married couple invite the neighbors over for a dinner party where every last detail—from the pronunciation of “jamón” to the provenance of a vintage rug adorning the apartment floor—-is subject to their guests’ scrutiny. The costume designer behind “The Invite,” Arianne Phillips, designed a wardrobe just as detail oriented as the film’s quick-witted dialogue. “This film is a throwback to the great relationship films of John Casavetes, Mike Nichols, and Woody Allen, where we told stories about people and relationships that were more character driven than plot driven,” Phillips says. 

Each member of the cast is styled in accordance with their personality. Neurotic housewife Angela (Olivia Wilde) literally blends into the wall, while her sardonic husband, Joe (Seth Rogen), sports classic, no frills menswear silhouettes likely purchased for him by his wife. The feng shui of the apartment—and its owners—is disrupted with the introduction of their upstairs neighbors, Pina (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), whose dark and sultry color schemes foreshadow the chaos that unfolds. 

When it came to costuming the hosts, Phillips looked to production designer Jade Healy’s set design for cues. On previous projects, Phillips has paid special attention to ensure that the actor doesn't morph into their grounding environment, but “The Invite” called for a different approach. “This [film] is like a tone poem,” Phillips tells The Set Set. “Usually there's a contrast so that the actor doesn't blend into the walls, but I was inspired by just the opposite in this case; Olivia's character should look like she is part of that apartment, that she blends into the apartment in a way that she's almost lost her personality.”

In the classic, frenetic fashion of an anxious host, Angela tries on a few different iterations of her shirt before landing on her hero outfit: a mint green collared blouse paired with masculine pleated trousers. The original plan was to put Wilde in a ’40s dress, but Phillips pivoted to allow for greater ease and mobility, while still holding onto the era. “It was an homage to Diane Keaton and to that Annie Hall style that was so influential when I was a kid and has an evergreen quality of a woman that has a lot of personal style,” Phillips explains. 

Phillips accessorized Angela’s look with her personal Hermès brown leather Mador watch, designed in the early ‘70s with a silver-studded, punk rock edge. “I don't think most people would know about that watch unless you know about that watch, but it would have been something that her mother passed down to her, or she found on eBay or something,” Phillips says. 

When Pina and Hawk enter the apartment, they are dressed somewhat innocuously, while still bearing a juxtaposition to Angela and Joe’s muted color palette. “At the outset, I didn't want the audience to have any real preconceptions about the characters,” Phillips said. Drawing on her experience designing tour costumes for Madonna, Phillips imbued Pina’s outfit with enough literal layers to sustain the film. “[As] a guest coming over to her neighbor's apartment, it wasn't like [Pina] could change clothes, so I wanted to make sure that over the course of the film she had underlayers that she could play with as the story reveals itself into all the twists and turns,” Phillip says. Pina wears blue high-waisted jeans with an exposed button closure and a caramel leather jacket that later is taken off to reveal a sexy black blouse and matching bustier.

Phillips looked towards the New York-based fashion designer Nili Lotan as an ambassador for Pina’s signature “kick-ass” style. “[Lotan] has that kind of ’70s, effortless, confident, capable woman who has a point of view [style], that I wanted to imbue in Penélope’s character,” Phillips says. Accordingly, Pina wears a black Nili Lotan button-down blouse tucked into her jeans. 

Pina’s better half, Hawk, rocks a high-end version of the sort of new-age “man bracelet” that you see pop up in your neighborhood right as rent prices start to soar. “It's one of those monikers that you see of men who might be embracing yoga or nature… there's a metrosexual quality to him,” Phillips says. On the clothing front, he wears a fitted navy sweater that hints at his fireman physique underneath. He also wears an understated ring with a fire insignia on it, conceptualized by Phillips to emulate a Super Bowl award ring. 

In a stroke of scripted genius from Wilde, also the film’s director, Hawk and Pina keep their shoes on throughout the dinner party. The couple’s added height, and ease with which they can leave, give them stature over the shoeless Angela and Joe, who are tethered to the apartment both literally and metaphorically. “A lot of times I start with the shoes up, because shoes really inform an actor and how they carry themselves for the character,” Phillips says. By placing Pina in a pair of vintage Chloe boots from The Real Real, evocative of “the ’70s European confident woman” archetype epitomized on screen by Jane Birkin and Charlotte Rampling, Phillips helped create an imbalance in her ability to move through, and easily escape, the space to which Angela and Joe find themselves stuck.