‘Anora’ Costume Designer Talks Perfecting New York Streetwear, Avoiding Fast Fashion and How She Found That Perfect Fur Coat: ‘It’s Basically Our Cinderella Glass Slipper’

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In Sean Baker‘s Palme d’Or-winning “Anora,” Mikey Madison‘s titular Ani goes through a whirlwind evolution as she’s swept from the club where she makes a living as a sex worker to the palatial mansion of the weed-smoking, video-game playing, inexplicably charming Ivan, the prodigal son to a billionaire Russian oligarch. Throughout the film, she lives out her own modern-day Cinderella story on the gritty streets of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach.

It’s Ani’s clothing that perhaps most clearly demarcates her transformation from hustling stripper to designer-clad darling. In telling this sartorial story, costume designer Jocelyn Pierce tells Variety that she broke down Anora’s costume arc into three parts: The Club, Girlfriend Week and Wifey. “We really tried to concentrate as though these were different worlds,” Pierce says.

Aspirational dressing was at the core of Girlfriend Week, the era Pierce says she had the most fun designing. By the end of the film, skin-baring sets are swapped out for glamorous furs, and budget streetwear steals for splashy logos.

“It’s like, dress for the job you want,” Pierce says. She cites two of her favorite looks during the Girlfriend sequences: an electric blue Hervé Léger bandage dress, which marks the first outfit we see Ani in outside of the club, and the dazzling firetruck red dress she wears at Ivan’s “Project X”-evoking house party a few days later — her official initiation into this strange, enchanting world in which she now finds herself.

The latter dress is now featured on one of the main promo images for the film. “Every time I see that billboard on Sunset Boulevard I’m like ‘Oh, my God!'” Pierce exclaims.

As for the glass slipper in Ani’s twisted Cinderella story? The Russian Sable coat Ivan buys for her after their wedding which, for the uninitiated, can retail for upwards of $100,000. The luxe, ankle-grazing outerwear piece is the high-fashion answer to the cropped Calvin Klein faux-leather puffer she wears in the club at the beginning of the film.

“It’s a signifier, a symbol,” Pierce says about the fur coat. “It’s so nice to see that arc from the streetwear puffer coat all the way to glamour.”

Ivan’s style, meanwhile, changed dramatically from what the team first imagined for the character upon reading the script. While Pierce first set out to splash him in Gucci logos (“He’s the kind of guy that goes to the fanciest stores and buys the newest thing,” she reasoned) her plans took a detour after she met 22 year-old Mark Eydelshtey, who plays Ivan in the film.

“He is possibly the most charming person on earth. We were like, ‘Oh, my God, there’s so much more to him,'” Pierce says. “It’s not like we could just throw him in a Gucci track suit. He was so nuanced and he had so many ideas and was so playful.”

Still, anyone who’s seen the film knows there’s no lack of luxury fashion — Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga and Raf Simons all make frequent appearances. However, Ivan’s charm and personality shines through the most in lesser-known brands, such as Russian labels Roma Uvarov and Gosha Rubchinskiy, both of which the Russian-born actor introduced to the team himself. Other standouts were bespoke pieces made by local artists, such as the cartoon-scraped sweatshirt made by the Brooklyn designer Atticus Torre, and a variety of luxury custom-made necklaces designed by Mike Novak.

“Ivan’s the kinda guy who can get the one-of-one custom thing,” Pierce says.

Below, Pierce talks through how she created some of the film’s most standout looks from the film:

The Club

“Instagram was actually invaluable, especially when it came to the dancers. One photographer Rachel Edelstein photographs dancers in San Francisco and her work was really inspiring to me because it was like she was capturing an authenticity, but then also just exciting-looking clothing.

But then it became a really fluid process because we were fully immersed in Brighton Beach — that’s where our office was, that’s where the cast and crew were living. If we saw something enough times it would be like, ‘Okay, that’s a thing.’

I think most of, if not all, of our background dancers were actual dancers so that was a full education. I really can’t take credit for what the atmosphere looked like in the club because these women were so generous with their clothing.”

Girlfriend Week

“This dress was how we kicked off Girlfriend Week. We knew that it was important because it would be the first time we’d see her out of the club. Marie Rosenfield, my assistant, brought in this Hervé Léger dress and it was a last-minute perfect match.

It is a really recognizable designer, it’s a signifier for status. It also happens to be the perfect color blue, like it was so electric. And because New York winter is so cold and that mansion was so stark, it popped.

It’s also that ‘dress for the job you want’ thing. She’s sort of hustling, trying to make some money and and get out of the situation she’s in, and the dress encapsulates all that. I’m so glad we found it.”

“I love this dress so much. Every time I see the billboard on Sunset Boulevard, I’m like, ‘Oh, my God!’ Sean had been pulling images and there was one with this chain mail dress. And then we just scoured the internet for all the chain mail dresses we could find. We tried a few but this one was just… the one. That’s sort of the way it is. We’ll pull as many options as we can find and then there’s always that one where you’ll like, ‘It can’t be any other dress.'”

Wifey

“Because we were shooting on film, our cinematographer Drew Daniels was talking about wanting a certain shine. She wears three coats in a film — there’s the puffer she wears when she’s in and out of the club. Drew was like we need the shiniest puffer coat you can find because of the darkness and shooting on film. We wanted it to catch the light. And then that we found that cropped one, this is her sexy puffer coat. And that was just like a sort of fake leather thing.

And then the fur coat is where we kick off Wifey. That was also just a signifier, a symbol. It’s so nice to see that arc from the streetwear puffer coat all the way to glamour. In her Cinderella story, it’s basically her glass slipper.”

Ivan’s Russian Billionaire Swag

“I always sort of jumbled Ivan into leopard. I called up my friend who I knew had all this Dolce stuff and he did and I picked it up the day before we left for Vegas. It was fitting and just worked on him. We also wanted Vegas to feel flashier than New York, like almost suddenly we were in a music video. So we tried to turn everybody up.”