Unfurling the Unusual Costumes of ‘Poor Things’

The designer Holly Waddington had wide latitude in envisioning the costumes for “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s mad comedy starring Emma Stone.

“The only brief really was that he didn’t want it to be overtly like a period drama” — the script is set in the 1880s — “and he didn’t want it to be overtly like a science fiction film,” Waddington said. In the movie (a Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival and now an Oscar contender), Stone is a scientist’s creation who evolves from a childlike naïf to a sexually and politically liberated woman.

The Greek-born director Lanthimos, known for his surrealist vision, gave Waddington only one reference image: a young designer’s take on “inflatable trousers,” Waddington recalled. When puffed up, they “created this really exaggerated shape, just incredibly curvaceous.” She worked with other departments, like production design and hair and makeup, to finish the look for Stone’s Bella Baxter, whose life changes on a Grand Tour of cities like Lisbon.

A lot snapped into focus when Waddington learned that Bella would have long, jet-black hair; an Egon Schiele painting was Lanthimos’s inspiration for that, she said, and it informed her color palette. Another thing to consider, in a movie with a lot of sex scenes: How the clothes come off. “I had many slightly awkward conversations with Yorgos about it,” she said. “He was asking me, how does she have sex in these? I was probably a bit embarrassed. But he’s not, at all.”

Waddington knew her Victoriana; she spent years working in a costume house, specializing in archival ladies fashion. But for this film, she cut loose the corsetry — a scary prospect at first, she said, because corsets give period clothes their shape — and mixed eras and materials. Early on, Mrs. Prim, the medical assistant turned nanny, chooses Bella’s wardrobe; then she finds her own style. “The clothes needed to really change with her,” Waddington said.

Beyond that, Lanthimos offered conceptual freedom. “He just doesn’t need to have a whole back story,” she said. If it looked good, it flew. Bella’s statement sleeves are already having a moment.