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| Fifth Element |
French director Luc Besson’s 1997 sci-fi The Fifth Element was, and still is, pretty polarising. It’s not hard to see why; the film, then the most expensive non-US one ever made, was overly long, full of holes, and in need of, “fierce trimming”, as Roger Ebert noted at the time. However, it was and still is fiercely adored; it's exciting, a lot of fun, and revolutionised a genre that can so often be oppressively dire. What makes The Fifth Element so much fun is not only its fast pace and dialogue, but its visuals. Besson and his team, which included renowned cinematographer Thierry Arbogast and production designer Dan Wiel, worked together with the $90 million budget to bring Besson’s vision to life. While the rest of the visuals are pretty impressive, it's the costumes that tie the whole thing together.
On board to design them was former enfant terrible of the design world Jean Paul Gaultier, who created over 1000 ostentatious, bright, detailed costumes for the film; even honing in on the details of characters in crowd shots. The film would likely not have had quite the same impact without Gaultier’s obsessive commitment. Speaking at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Gaultier retrospective, Thierry-Maxime Loriot commented on Gaultier’s attention to detail, saying, “a thousand costumes is like 10 collections but all for one movie. It’s an incredible amount of work people don’t even know about. For a thousand costumes, he may have even done 5,000 sketches before narrowing it down”. The costumes are colourful, exciting, and a world away from the grim rain-soaked worlds of predecessors like Blade Runner (1982). Gaultier’s costumes were bright and fun; they took inspiration from his previous collections while incorporating non-traditional materials and a futuristic vision.
Even after 20 years, Gaultier’s costumes remain an incredible and necessary feat of design. Here we celebrate just a few of the thousand.
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