It has been 80 years since the last big screen adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic novel, Rebecca. The previous incarnation was a chilling Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, and this time Du Maurier’s seminal work has had a glossy big budget Netflix treatment. Armie Hammer takes on Maxim de Winter, the handsome widower of the titular Rebecca, and Lily James plays the unnamed young woman who meets de Winter in the south of France, quickly falls in love and marries him to become Mrs. De Winter.
After their whirlwind romance under the Monte Carlo sun, the duo returns to de Winter’s imposing English estate, Manderley. It is here that the film takes its most chilling turn as the new Mrs. De Winter realises she is living in the shadow of her husband’s first wife and is slowly being terrorised by the reminders of her and the estate’s formidable housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, played by Kristin Scott Thomas.
The characters are rich and electric, the narrative gives you chills and the cinematography makes you want to run away to the sumptuous South of France, however, it’s the clothes that really bring this adaptation to life. Until Lily James’ character moves into Manderley she is unnamed. Dialogue presents snippets of information about her character, but for the most part we are reliant on her clothes to give us a sense of identity. The clothes much like the character take on a journey, one rich in detail and underlying meanings. From deliberate femininity, to menacing tailoring the fashion in Rebecca is a visual feast.
Rebecca’s costume designer Julian Day – the creative who previous brought Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocket Man to life – explains how you piece together a nameless female lead:
“With every film you start with a script and what was really special about this script was that there is so much background material from the novel. It’s a classic, gothic, horror, thriller so all those elements make for an easy start. Then you have these incredibly fleshed out characters that change as the story goes along and you get to adapt with that.”
The trajectory of Mrs. De Winter’s wardrobe goes from frumpy, heavy, dark skirt suits when we first meet her as a lady’s maid, to light and freeing colours and fabrics when she is falling in love with Maxim all the way through to powerful pieces she uses to exert her position as lady of the manor.
Day explains, “For Lily’s mood board her style and her mood changes throughout the film and we had to reflect that. I started by looking at strong female actors from that time, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich – they were ground breakers when it came to style. I really wanted to get across this idea of a really strong woman. Yes, she cracks and she stumbles, but essentially she is an incredibly strong character and I wanted to give her not necessary masculine silhouettes but something that reflected that power.”
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