The filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos loves to collect people. He cast Emma Stone in his films The Favourite, Poor Things, and the new Kinds of Kindness, in cinemas everywhere now. He has enlisted Joe Alwyn along for several films, too, and his commitment to crew is no different. Although Kinds of Kindness marks the costume designer Jennifer Johnson’s first collaboration with Lanthimos, she has already been brought back for next year’s Bugonia (also starring Stone and Alwyn), which is currently in production. “Yorgos only works with nice people, and I think that’s why I was invited back,” Johnson told us when we spoke with her recently.
It’s strange, almost, to think that Lanthimos works with many of the same crew over and over again, as each of his films is so radically different from the one before it. The Favourite? A queer psychosexual historical melodrama. Poor Things? A campy, steampunk allegory. And now, Kinds of Kindness? A chaotic triptych, with three distinct storylines and the principal actors each playing different roles in each story — and one filled with curveballs, and should-I-laugh-or-should-I-squirm moments.
Whatever the material, it’s clear that Lanthimos and Johnson have a flawless eye for costume design. Although set in some sort of present day, Kinds of Kindness takes us on a phantasmagorical journey through clothing — from cult members wearing water shoes to Willem Defoe in an orange bikini. The clothes here seem normal, but are worn by people who are anything but. We caught up with Johnson to get a behind-the-scenes look at how she brought this truly unique film to life through costume.
There are many things that make Kinds of Kindness unique, but I think the most obvious thing is its unique triptych format. Was that a challenge to costume?
It was very challenging. I had to make strong delineations because the same actors are in each story and we had a very tight [production] schedule. By making a set of rules that paid attention to colour and pattern that were special to each character really helped. I used the themes of power and influence and subversive control as different decision-makers of why people wear what they did in each story. In each fitting with an actor, we would sometimes traverse each story in the film, and they’re such extreme contrasts. For Willem Defoe, for example, he was wearing the most gorgeous suiting, then was a working class father, then was a cult leader wearing an orange bikini.
Let’s get specific — how did you articulate Emma Stone’s three distinct characters?
To visually delineate between the three stories, I used pattern, silhouette and colour. Emma’s first character is Rita, and Rita is controlled by a man called Raymond, who is played by Willem Defoe. He is a powerful CEO and he gives a list to these employees he controls. Her character sells glasses, and when we meet her, she is in these extremely sexy, highly inappropriate dresses and impossibly tall shoes that make no sense for somebody working at a small glasses shop. So there is this inappropriateness in terms of how she dresses.
In the second story, she plays an oceanographer, and she wears these very oversized pieces and very Margaritaville tropical prints. She’s less interested in clothing and the way things fit, and it’s also kind of a comedy of how she is a swinger. The first character is how you would imagine a swinger to dress, but in the second story she is actually a swinger, and it’s contrasted with this suburban, very normal way of dressing: baggy chino pants that zip off into shorts, Tommy Bahama tropical prints, things that are very comfortable to her life as an oceanographer.
And in the third story she is a member of a cult and her job is to find a replacement of the cult leader, so she is dressed like a detective. She goes out into the world and wears the cheapest suit she can find at the mall — it’s kind of like the uniforms that door-to-door Mormons wear as she’s trying to recruit. That suit is her pretending that she’s not weird. She’s pretending to be a normal member of society.
I recall that suit from the film’s trailer!
It’s so not normal. The funny thing about that suit is that sometimes the most banal thing that is meant for somebody to look “business appropriate” is over-designed. That suit is Calvin Klein but not runway Calvin Klein — it’s the Calvin Klein you buy at Macy’s. And that suit was actually ruched in the sleeves but I took out the ruching because it was too ugly.
But somehow, Emma makes it look cool.
Well, Emma is so gorgeous. The suit when you see it hanging on the rack is pretty terrible. That’s what I like to call “landfill” — no disrespect to the suit itself, it’s a great suit that served its purpose, but it’s not the kind of suit that’s going to be handed down for very long. And Emma is so gorgeous that she turns anything into the coolest thing… I mean, some of her shirts are from Old Navy… The cream blouse she wears is actually really gorgeous.
It’s funny hearing you mention “the kind of Calvin Klein you buy at Macy’s” and Old Navy — when I interview costume designers, it’s very often, “Oh, we pulled from the Chanel archives,” or “Armani collaborated with us on this piece”. We very often see designer, luxury, and couture pieces in film.
Just like how there are method actors, I think it’s important to method shop. When you’re sourcing from the stores, it’s really important that it be true to that character. In the film, Emma’s character is in the United States and she comes from a very suburban, modest life and you see parts of her home life with her daughter and husband; they have this cute cottage. She has a good life — but she’s not somebody with a lot of money or high fashion. It would’ve been disingenuous if that suit was really expensive. We chose not to tailor the trousers, and they didn’t fit perfectly, and that was all intentional… There’s depth of choice with everything. It’s not just, “Oh, this is cool.”
We’ve seen Joe Alwyn become something of a fashion plate himself lately, giving interviews about style and attending some of the men’s shows. What was he like to collaborate with?
Joe is amazing. He is such a lovely actor. He’s gorgeous in real life and lovely and polite and he is really willing to get weird with things that aren’t cool or good looking — which is true of all the actors on this project; they were really willing to take risks. The first character Joe plays is this collectibles dealer who wears this earring, and his second character is this totally stoned bro. But Joe’s personal sense of style never got in the way and that makes for a really lovely collaborator.
A truly bizarre orange bikini plays an important role on Willem Defoe’s character in the third story. Where did that come from?
That is what I call an “Amazon weirdo” — when you do a really weird deep dive on Amazon because the character requires something you can’t find on this planet. It’s not a Speedo – it’s questionable where it was made – and while I don’t like to promote shopping on Amazon and am very aware of the environmental impact of what we do, sometimes the character just needs that weird thing off Amazon and you go down this rabbit hole.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.