What is a costume for?
And can good clothes be bad costumes?
What is a costume for?
Last spring, after being laid off from a job I hated and desperate to find another career path, I enrolled in a Costume Design and Wardrobe Tech certificate program at FIT. Sadly, this did not result in a new career (if you Google the dates of the Hollywood strikes and consider their aftermath, you’ll see why the endeavor was doomed from the start) but what it did do is make me feel qualified to say that Blake Lively’s costumes have always been bad, actually.
I have to admit to feeling a little vindicated over the past week or so as everyone finally realized this en masse, but I understand why she was able to fake it this long: her designer party wear on Gossip Girl birthed a thousand fledgling fashion blogs, and her suits in A Simple Favor were the best thing about that movie, so for a while she was given a pass to wear whatever she wanted on film and in life, as long as it was worth writing an article about. But were they good costumes, or just good outfits? There’s a difference.
My philosophy on costumes is this: They should be plausibly affordable by the character wearing them. They should tell us something about the character. They should mirror the character’s development or story arc. They shouldn’t distract from the story. And they should be as fun to look at as possible.
Take, for example, Emily in Paris—a show that makes its controversial costumes one of its main selling points as a piece of entertainment. Can Emily afford the clothes she wears? No. But do they tell us something about the character? No, in that no basic bitch in Chicago is dressing this way. Yes, in that they tell us Emily is tacky, brash and out of place in chic Paris. Do they mirror the Emily’s character arc? No, she always looks exactly the same no matter what’s happening in her life. But then, I guess her character doesn’t develop either—listen, it’s not a good show. Do her costumes distract from the story? They basically ARE the story. But are they fun to look at? Thankfully yes—fun to giggle at too.
Blake Lively is famous for not working with a stylist, but of course her TV shows and movies have costume designers. So why would I blame Blake for her costumes? Well, despite A Simple Favor costume designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus defending contemporary costuming by telling Bustle "actors are not walking into the movie in their own clothes," Lively has claimed to do exactly that. And she was the one to reach out to Christian Laboutin and Ralph Lauren for clothes for A Simple Favor.
“The idea of menswear came from Blake," Kalfus said in another interview. So we know she is an eager collaborator in the costuming of her projects. And it’s not uncommon for even less fashion-minded actors to include clauses in their contract that give them costume approval, or that make stipulations about how the actor will be groomed or depicted in a film—often insisting on hiring their own hair and makeup teams.
So we know she has a lot of control over her in-character looks. And when you compare her costumes to those of the other characters in a given film, you can see a clear distinction between the performers the costume designer collaborated with and those they simply dressed.
And Lively’s costumes have been slipping along with her red carpet style in a downward spiral from over-the-top to simple bad taste:
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
The pants ARE the plot and the pants are kind of ugly, but that does make sense for young women in the early aughts. I don’t think she had costume approval power at this point in her career, so what more is there to say?
Gossip Girl
I didn’t watch the show, but I couldn’t avoid the fashion breakdowns in women’s media at the time. Obviously, her character could afford the clothes she was wearing, and a brief review of costume images over the show’s run demonstrate a style evolution from student to young woman. I imagine by the end of this show’s run she was starting to collaborate on her looks, but it’s her higher-profile film work where she seems to really wrest control of the couture.
Age of Adaline
First of all, she’s a librarian. Second of all, she’s trying to avoid suspicion so no one notices she’s immortal. So why is she splashing out on floor length gowns for a solo New Year’s Eve? If you look like Blake Lively and you’re trying to avoid notice, you probably shouldn’t dress like her too. Costume designer Angus Strathie knows what the character calls for, and yet what we see on screen is something quite the opposite of the memo.
The Shallows
Does she wear anything other than a swimsuit in this? I can’t remember, but I’m guessing no. I’m impressed she didn’t try to add a dickie and tie over her bikini top.
A Simple Favor
This is where things get really out of hand. Why is her character showing up at school drop-off in a three-piece suit? She’s mysterious! But do the suits technically make sense for her character? She does work for a fashion brand, and she is supposed to be keeping up a facade of wealth. And her looks get more outlandish as we learn more about her (criminal?) past. They’re also incredibly fun to watch—the suits are gorgeous and I love menswear looks for women. But god, are they distracting. Have you ever been getting dressed to go be confronted for your horrible crimes and thought, better tape a tuxedo jacket to my bare breasts and grab my designer cane?
It Ends With Us
I’ve listened to enough “we read it so you don’t have to” podcast episodes about this god-awful book to know she plays an orphaned florist named Lily Blossom Bloom. An orphaned florist who can afford designer cashmere and Gucci boots apparently, and who would wear pajamas over fishnet tights. As the hosts of Celebrity Memoir Book Club joked on a recent subscriber-only post: she’s wearing layers because her character has layers. Mind. Blown.
These costumes were bound to get blowback because her red carpet style, like this catsuit at the Deadpool and Wolverine premier, was already raising eyebrows. And her costume plot for the It Ends With Us press tour could be boiled down to: florals for a florist.
But ultimately, both the costumes and the red carpet looks make sense because she has only ever dressed as herself, on set or on the carpet, and in that sense, she’s always passing the costume test. She can afford the clothes. They tell us she loves fashion, maybe to a fault, and that she wants control. The costumes follow her arc, from fashion darling to problematic celeb. The looks are starting to distract from the story she wants to tell about herself, but god, they are fun to look at.
Recommendations
The dupe inception of these lacy sling backs from Target, which are an exact dupe of this pair from Steve Madden which are pretty good dupes of the Christian Dior originals. If you’re going to buy a dupe, why spend over $50? (And they’re on sale!)
This Courtney Maum essay/interview with Lauren Hough for her Before and After The Book Deal Substack on whether you should be writing a traditional memoir or a memoir-in-essays. I already knew I wanted to use the essay structure in my book, but this was a good distillation of what will likely work best for your story.
Thelma, an action comedy about a 90-something woman getting revenge on a phone scammer. June Squibb is a delight, and clever Mission Impossible homages abound.