Many movies that came out of the #MeToo movement deliberately kept their visual and sartorial profiles sparse: Recall the muted turtlenecks and depressing gray offices of Kitty Green’s 2020 film The Assistant or New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (played by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan, respectively) discovering they’re wearing almost the same fast-fashion-y white dress on a reporting trip in the 2022 drama She Said. But Luca Guadagnino’s new psychological thriller, After the Hunt—featuring costumes designed by Celine knitwear head Giulia Piersanti, a longtime collaborator of the director’s (their other films together include A Bigger Splash, Call Me by Your Name, and Bones and All)—doesn’t shy away from using quiet luxury as a mode of expression.
Much of After the Hunt’s action revolves around the relationship between Yale professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) and her protégée Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri), which sours when Resnick accuses one of Imhoff’s colleagues of sexual misconduct. Vogue spoke to Piersanti about her longtime friendship with Guadagnino, the difference she sees between fashion design and costuming for films, and choosing to eschew overt coziness or femininity in Imhoff’s and Resnick’s wardrobes.
Vogue: How did you and Luca Guadagnino first meet?
Giulia Piersanti: We met years ago through a mutual friend at this dinner, and we’ve stayed friends ever since. This was in my early 20s, so we were both quite young, and we started to work together later on. But we were really good friends to begin with.
You have been working with Guadagnino for a decade. What do you value most about your partnership?
First of all, there’s a friendship side. When Luca and I work on movies together, we stay at the same hotel and hang out before and after. We’re very close, so there’s a strong bond and friendship. When it comes to working together on a project, for me, it’s like, How do I contribute to my friend’s project, and how can I do my best to support him? Personality-wise, Luca amazes me. He’s such a multitasking person. He’ll be filming and doing photo shoots of fashion and architecture. Every time I’m tired, I’m like, No, if Luca can do it, I can do it. [Laughs.] He’s definitely my most inspiring friend. He’s so talented, and we have so many things that we like to do in common.
What’s the biggest difference between your work with Guadagnino for the screen and your role as head of knitwear at Celine?
I’ve been working as a fashion designer since I was very young. I started in my early 20s, so I’ve been doing it for many years. I’ll start with what my fashion job and my costume-designing job have in common: They are both fed by memory, observing people and how they dress and why they dress the way they do. Both jobs look at the past and memory. Fashion, to me, is more about what to create next that’s going to be new and relevant to today and tomorrow, whereas movies look at the past. I’ve done a lot of period films with Luca that are set in the 1970s and 1980s. Memory feeds my creativity and research in both jobs, but in fashion I will use it to create something new and consider how to move forward from there. In film, you reflect on that and use it for something that’s either in the past or present.
What does your process look like when you’re first starting out on a film project?
The beginning is quite similar in almost every project. It always starts from reading a script and having a deep conversation with Luca about his movie and what he wants to say about his characters. Luca can talk to me about a film and immediately discuss the kind of teacups they will be drinking from or the kind of wallpaper in that character’s bedroom. He’ll go very deep into his characters, and I use that information to start my own reflection. It starts with a lot of visual research, and that’s the part that pretty much stays the same with all the characters, films, and projects. From then, sometimes a film will have costumes made from scratch, and sometimes it’ll be a lot of vintage research, or in the case of a contemporary film like After the Hunt, it’s a lot of shopping. [Laughs.]
Can you tell me about the brands you pulled for After the Hunt’s two main characters?
I’ve been asked the brands that I’ve used for this film quite a lot, and I almost wish I [weren’t]. I did specifically use certain brands, but I really was attacking the project as something that wasn’t branded. I’m happy to tell people what brands are used so that they can source them, and also to serve the needs of people who lend us pieces. But I was indeed trying to be quite invisible about the brands that I was using. I chose very classic brands, and it’s hard in contemporary fashion to find things that are not so pushy on branding or trend. That’s why I used brands like The Row and Lemaire; I find them quite contemporary yet timeless, but I almost wish that people didn’t know what brands were being used.
What do you think people most commonly associate with academic dressing, and how did those associations affect your choices for After the Hunt?
I didn’t mind staying close to those associations, but from there it can take different directions. I could have gone for corduroy and checked shirts or something warmer and cozier like Aran sweaters, but I really chose to stay cold. The pieces I chose were quite academic oriented, but I was really trying to be cold with my choices and not comfy. The palette of the colors, of course, is quite cold. There’s never really any warm colors. Lines are very straight and edgy. There are no feminine pieces, no dresses, no heels; there’s no softness to the costumes in this film.
If you had to wear the clothes from one of your film collaborations with Guadagnino, which would it be?
All of them! I love all the characters. I try to be empathetic toward all of them when I can, even when they’re bad characters. Even when they’re badly dressed, I choose the best bad bag that I can. I also find a little bit of me in every character, even the men and boys and the older people, so I don’t know if I would be able to just choose one. I would probably pick things from a bunch of them.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
