With “Drop,” Gwen Jeffares Hourie makes scene-stealing look simple. You received’t spot a second of the Irish costume designer’s face in director Christopher Landon’s new psychological thriller, a few fancy first date that abruptly turns right into a covert homicide try. But if star Meghann Fahy‘s beautiful crimson catsuit caught your eye, then that twinkle got here immediately from Jeffares Hourie and the costume division.
“How did I get into costuming? I don’t know,” the designer advised IndieWire. “We all just fall into film. Isn’t that how it happens? We have this other weird life, and the film opens its door to you, and you drift in.”
Also identified for “Abigail” and “I Kill Giants,” Jeffares Hourie made it into the films after her and her mom’s material store shut down a number of years in the past. Located along the Irish coast within the city of Bray, the household enterprise as soon as stood simply up the road from Ardmore Studios, Ireland’s oldest manufacturing home. Costume designers made up their clientele for years, and, working right into a former patron someday, Jeffares Houriewas was casually satisfied to turn into an artist.
Cutting her tooth as a trainee on the musical comedy “Sing Street,” Jeffares Hourie continued to work with the costume designer on that movie, Tiziana Corvisieri, after that. She was the costume supervisor for Corvisieri on the rip-roaring “Cocaine Bear,” amongst different horror titles, and lately says, “I love blood. I love horror. I love all of that. I almost turn my nose up at anything that’s not a horror movie.”
“Drop” isn’t the scariest movie on the market, however its slow-burn suspense made the costume division much more very important. Set over a single night, this depressing meet-cute sees widowed single mother Violet (Meghann Fahy) getting again on the market with charming photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar). They’ve been speaking on-line for months, and so they need the evening to go nicely. But when threatening messages begin popping up on Violet’s cellphone, an unseen enemy, lurking close by, pushes her to poison her date.
“What I loved about the script from the start is that she is the accidental hero, not the male lead,” Jeffares Hourie stated. “And we all dress in our certain armored looks, whether we know we’re going into battle or not. When we have to go and hob-nob and schmooze and talk to people, we’re like, ‘Cool, I’m putting on my boss blazer today!’ Or ‘I’m wearing those sexy jeans that make my bottom look nice.’ Here, Violet did feel awesome and confident and ready for this big date, but then it all turns to shit.”
Not obtainable to customers (though it actually must be), Violet’s show-stopping jumpsuit was custom-made by Jeffares Hourie and her group. The designer describes herself as having a “small obsession” with velvet (“A good-quality velvet just moves and does… stuff on camera,” she stated), however full credit score for making the “Drop” ensemble crimson goes to Fahy. It’s a shade Jeffares Hourie says we don’t typically see on display — or in actual life — exactly as a result of it may be so putting.
“Meghann drew me to red, actually,” Jeffares Hourie stated. “I think the script originally called it this ‘beautiful black garment.’ And I was like, ‘Black? No. Get out of here. I’m not putting black on screen for four hours.’ But she was the one who said we should try red, and that was brilliant.”
The actress and her costume designer exchanged notes for weeks earlier than lastly touchdown on the silhouette and shade. In the top, they picked burgundy to keep away from Fahy “looking like Mrs. Claus,” Jeffares Hourie stated, and to make sure she match into the texture of the body in “Drop.” Without any monsters to run from or supernatural forces to combat, Violet is stationary and in the identical outfit for nearly the whole movie.
“You sort of just set her in the scene, but she also needs to be elevated out of it,” Jeffares Hourie defined. “With costumes, that loses you loads of colors. That loses you all those golds, all those wooden tones, and all those warm tones in the restaurant.” She continued, “We knew burgundy would look beautiful against her skin, against her hair, but we also knew it would sit in that world of [production designer Susie Cullen] and the specific palette of her set.”
It was essential to ship an outfit with sufficient visible curiosity to maintain audiences targeted on Violet, however Jeffares Hourie additionally wished to provide Fahy one thing she’d love working in for eight weeks. Comfort was needed (notably an action-heavy finale scene, we received’t spoil right here), and “Drop” nailed that. Per Jeffares Hourie, there have been 24 variations of the jumpsuit in complete, and “we even have one that we managed to fit [Christopher Landon] into on the very last day of the shoot.”
But the perfect costume designers do greater than dress actors — they stoke their artistic course of. For Jeffares Hourie, “Drop” was no exception. Despite a scene explicitly exhibiting how Violet’s sister, Jen (Violette Beane), pressured Fahy’s wallflower protagonist into sporting a glance that characters would sometimes by no means placed on, Jeffares Hourie nonetheless gave plenty of thought to how that merchandise wound up in that closet.
“‘Why did she own it? “We landed on the idea that this is that purchase that you make when it’s on sale somewhere, and you’ve seen it a million times, and you look at it, and you suddenly just go, ‘Right, fuck it,’” Jeffares Hourie stated, “Just, ‘I’m blowing 300 quid on this, even if I know I am too scared to wear it, but one day, one day, I will have the confidence to wear it.’”
Asked about equipment, Jeffares Hourie stated sticking with easy gold jewellery and black heels helped assist her imaginative and prescient of that buy. Confident and daring, the stylish minimalism Violet finally ends up sporting in “Drop” communicates “love interest” as a lot because it does “femme fatale… rushed out the door.” Lacing scads of background characters with their very own twisted clues, Jeffares Hourie mirrored on the easy pleasure she present in making Fahy stand out as a posh lady in a sea of crimson herrings.
“She wasn’t going to get completely covered in blood or vampire guts, and she wasn’t getting dragged through the bushes backwards. She didn’t get set on fire. No creatures ate her,” stated Jeffares Houir. “We just needed super strong, super gorgeous, and lovely to look at. We spent 12 weeks making it, so I’m over the jumpsuit now, but it was really meant for the big screen.”
From Universal Pictures, “Drop” is now obtainable on digital platforms and can later stream on Peacock.
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