The long-awaited Denis Villeneuve adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel Dune hit cinemas last week, and the Internet is positively aflame. Nearly anything Timothée Chalamet does these days garners mass attention (even if he’s just going to lunch with Larry David), but this film is on another level: The novel has enjoyed a cultlike following since its debut in the 1960s. The film’s cast is a roll call of A-list Hollywood actors at the top of their game, from Zendaya to Charlotte Rampling to Oscar Isaac. Denis Villeneuve is the beloved creator of Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). And, for our purposes here today, the costumes were handled by the extraordinary duo Jacqueline West (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Revenant) and Bob Morgan (Inception, Behind the Candelabra, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil).
If you don’t know anything about Dune, here’s a lightning-speed summary. Mr. Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, heir to the royal House of Atreides, who colonize the desert planet Arrakis in order to cultivate “spice,” the most valuable substance in the universe, and a metaphor for oil. After things don’t quite work out for the Atreides family on Arrakis, Paul retreats into the desert and begins an epic quest to save all of humanity. In doing so, he encounters the desert-dwelling Fremen people—and among them, the mysterious young Chani, played by Zendaya.
The world building is one of the things people love about the film, and the costumes play a big part in that. In an interview with BAZAAR.com, West and Morgan explain that they avoided the slick style of many space travel movies in favor of a totally different aesthetic—something that West calls “mod-eval,” a blend of modern and medieval. Instead of drawing references from the worlds of Star Trek or Guardians of the Galaxy, they looked to Renaissance art, tarot cards, medieval imagery of nuns, 14th-century Avignon popes, and paintings by Francisco Goya. “We looked at this as an epic adventure,” Morgan says. “It takes place in the future on worlds far away. … When we first met with Denis, we realized this is not a movie about spaceships and aliens. We were making this historical epic adventure that took place in a different world.”
Chalamet—noted fashion darling and friend of such brands as Haider Ackermann, Louis Vuitton, and Prada—is something of a style chameleon in the film. When the action begins on his rainy home planet of Caledan, we see Paul in strict, midnight-green woolen suits for special occasions, and a linen shirt when he’s off-duty. That shirt, created by West, features a row of hidden magnetic buttons that allows the shirt to “open and close by itself,” something that Chalamet enjoyed playing with on set. It’s a simple garment and probably one of the film’s plainer looks, but it’s a perfect embodiment of that “mod-eval” aesthetic: handmade from a natural, unassuming linen fiber, but with the kind of hidden functionality that one might expect in the fashion of centuries to come.
More of that utilitarianism comes later on in the film when Paul begins to explore the desert, and we see him in a “stillsuit,” a mechanized jumpsuit that turns perspiration into potable water so its wearer can survive in the desert. “You’ll probably see these on the runway in a few years, with the way the environment is going,” West tells us.
(Aside: As if you needed another reason to swoon over Chalamet, West told us in an interview that the actor is every bit as charming in person as you’d think he is. “When I would arrive on set and get out of my car in the mornings, he would take off his jacket and put it on the ground for me to get out on,” she says.)
Of course, with a jawline for the ages and an enviable head of hair, Chalamet looks good in anything—but the thing with this film’s costuming is that Paul’s looks are all pretty banal by design. His character, after all, is on a search to discover his true identity and purpose in life. That’s why we see him in his family’s traditional suiting in the first half of the film, and in the stillsuits and desert garb toward the end as he branches out on his own. He’s not a hero yet—so he shouldn’t be dressed like one.
If Paul’s inner journey explains why his costumes are on the film’s plainer end of the spectrum, it’s no secret, then, that Dune’s most fantastical and memorable costumes are worn by its women—all deeply assured of their identities, all rooted in a sense of power. When it comes to the clothes, Dune’s women steal the show.
Consider Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica, played by Rebecca Ferguson. Companion to Paul’s father Duke Leto Atreides, she is a devout member of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive religious faction of women—think powerful nuns who play politics. We see her in a few severe, medieval-looking long-sleeved gowns as the film opens, suggesting obedience and piousness. The kind of character you’d see and not give a second thought to. Right? Wrong.
As her character develops and we learn more about the secrets Lady Jessica harbors, her costumes offer flashes of brilliance. When the Atreides family arrives on Arrakis, she steps onto the desert planet wearing striking, full-body metal jewelry over her torso and head. The look recalls chain mail, or traditional Hindu wedding jewelry, or even those Margiela diamond masks that Kanye West was partial toward circa 2014. As if that wasn’t dramatic enough, she also wears an enormous silk gauze veil, which flutters violently in the wind. “It was so dramatic,” Morgan tells us. “It was 15 yards. Just massive.” Masculinity versus femininity, tradition versus freedom, delicate exterior versus a fraught, wrought interior—interpret as you will, but this look is among the film’s (perhaps the year’s) best.
Next, the incomparable Charlotte Rampling in the role of Reverend Mother Mohiam, senior member of the Bene Gesserit. We’ve seen balaclavas on the runways at Celine, Vetements, and Rick Owens lately—and who could forget Kim Kardashian’s literal head-to-toe all-black-everything Balenciaga from this year’s Met Gala—but to see one of the world’s best actresses with her face covered by black mesh for an entire film is unsettling. Obviously, this character has something malignant to hide.
And then, there’s Zendaya. She first comes to us in a series of dream sequences, when Paul sees Chani standing in the desert in a gauzy white linen jumpsuit—the kind of piece that any of us would be lucky to pull off without looking like a sack of potatoes. By the time Paul encounters her in real life, she’s wearing a stillsuit, yet swathed in an enormous piece of linen gauze that’s part scarf, part cape. After creating the stillsuits, West thought they needed “something more romantic,” so she began to research “people traversing the salt trails of Morocco and the Sahara, and how they would wrap themselves in these gauzes to protect themselves from the elements.”
West sent the film’s location scout to bring her back samples of sand and stones from the deserts where the film would be shot, and she dyed enormous lengths of gauzes to match, so these “flowing, billowing gauzes” would “reflect the shifting sands of the desert.” The result is a utilitarian suit of the future that feels connected to desert garb of our own planet’s traditional desert peoples—and much more beautiful than the endless iterations of “space suits” we’ve seen in films past. We’ll take cape-clad Zendaya standing windswept on a desert cliff any day over a one-dimensional character firing laser guns in spandex. So, sorry to Timothée, but in the end, it’s the women of Dune whose costumes will linger in our imaginations long after we’ve left the theater.
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Sorry, Timothée, but the Women of Dune Have the Best Costumes
Source: Filipino Journal Articles
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