Holly Waddington Interview
Fashion, Feminism & Frankenstein
In Poor Things, HOLLY WADDINGTON showed the fashion industry the power of costume design. In an interview with Bridget Devine she tells us more about the concepts of femininity and rebirth behind Emma Stone’s frilly blouses, exaggerated sleeves and latex trims.19th February 2024
I was lucky enough to have a conversation with the costume designer of Poor Things, Holly Waddington, despite the media frenzy surrounding the film and awards season. Her creative talent led to her recently winning the Best Costume Design Award at the BAFTAs, and being nominated for an Oscar. She explains how despite the dystopian-Victorian setting of the film, she and director Yorgos Lanthimos agreed not to dress Bella in a corset. ‘To be bound and shackled in that way didn't feel like the conceptually right thing to do for a character who is so free and liberated in her body and who she is.’ Not only Bella’s intelligent, strong-willed mind but her childlike physicality is equally essential to her rebirth into society, ‘on a physical level it would be impossible to put her in a corset, because of how she moves and how she is in the world’.
We discuss the moral controversy surrounding the film as this feminist-frankenstein disrupts nature on a biological and social level, but Bella’s brilliance comes from the alleviation of these chains and allows for a freedom and rebirth never seen on screen before. ‘To have this liberated hair and liberated waistline, gives the clothes actually quite a 70’s silhouette, which is a period we associate with freedom and sexual liberation.’ This connection to the 70’s comes from the hair and clothes just as much as it comes from her sexual freedom and exploration of experience. In a way I think this helps the modern audience relate to Bella’s character more as you see her unfiltered humanity rather than the facade society once did and still does instil upon us.
I begin by asking Holly Waddington about my favourite costume in the film. It’s a long plum-purple dress made from ruched silky fabric, with huge puffed sleeves and gold details of hands clasping and draping around the bodice. Worn by Madame Swiney, the French brothel manager, immediately I wanted to know the meaning of a dress that looked so textured and tactile. Holly tells me that I am the first person to ask her about the golden hands and explains,
‘I really like the idea of the hands being pressed into her body, it's a very sensual and sexual way she is being held. As if her body was being touched, I felt it was quite an interesting idea for somebody who's running a brothel to have this motif built into her clothing.’
She goes into detail and tells me how she found an old door knocker in a flea market in Budapest and she ‘took a cast from it and made the little clasps (for the dress) from this Hungarian door knocker’. Door knockers were often very elaborate and intricately made in the Victorian era, so to reuse a historical piece in this way is a fascinating example of the film's themes of rebirth and exploration.
Having been to visit the Barbican exhibition that displayed several of the costumes from the film, I discussed with Holly the construction of the garments, specifically the wedding dress that Bella wore. Her vision was of this huge, imposing gown that embodied Bella’s personality but was still very much in touch with her femininity and sexuality throughout the film. ‘I wanted you to be able to see her body and her form for it to continue to have this freedom.’ The dress features balloon sleeves, a striped, boned bustle and white netting. Holly depicts how, ‘all of those tubes, the lines that go around the dress, were about imprisonment and the motif of a cage.’ She continued to explain this juxtaposed concept, ‘I was thinking about cages but also her being sort of non-trappable’, which is true both physically and emotionally for Bella’s character. ‘The dress is like a metaphor for sex. For her sex is about them both being incredibly vulnerable and confident, and the dress is both of those things.’
Holly is a costume designer who has worked on many films, mostly period dramas, including Lady Macbeth starring Florence Pugh. She tells me how fantastic Yorgos Lanthimos, the director of Poor Things is to work with, saying how he’s ‘really prepared to take risks and push boundaries’ and how he made it such a special project for the team behind the movie. ‘It’s really an expression, I feel, of me. And often as a costume designer you’re not being asked to deliver an expression of yourself’. In her words, ‘it was about creativity and being able to work with a really artistic director who allows me to design and create things’.
I think this is clear when watching the film and I would urge anyone who hasn’t seen it yet to watch it as it is one of those films that make you consider life and society from an unfiltered point of view, that of a child’s, and it speaks volumes for how little life has changed since the Victorian era in more ways than we might realise. Bella’s rebirth has a strong symbolism that applies to every one of us and we can all relate to her on some level which is why Holly created such conceptually fantastic costumes and Yorgos a conceptually thrilling film. Toward the end of our conversation Holly highlights why Yorgos and the team managed to create something, which had been in the works for so long, that has such a huge impact on the film and fashion industries. ‘He (Yorgos) works with people who have never done it before, never designed films before, never composed songs before… People like me.’