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Joanna Hogg decides not to wear “something that screams, ‘She’s the director! She’s in charge!’ No jodhpurs, no extravagant hats,” she writes in the introduction to a new book. How directors dress. “There is an invisibility in the role of a director. You are trying to enter a world that you have created and be an observer within it. “You want to bring out the best in other people, not be the center of attention.”
Through essays by Hogg, designer Yohji Yamamoto, and others, the book raises the question of what clothing means on a film set and, more broadly, the decisions involved in leading a creative team. As Hogg writes, he asks, “Does what you wear change who you are?”
Derek Jarman directed The Tempest with a padded jacket and several shirts, preferring a different type of work clothes to Hogg’s fitted shoulders. “It is clear that there was no budget for heating,” observes Hogg. “Jarman’s clothes embody an elemental kind of functionality, signaling that the film is the only thing that matters.”
Paul Thomas Anderson lived up to his cool-kid reputation by wearing a bucket hat and flip-flops on the red carpet in 1998. Pedro Almodóvar dressed in Prada sweaters and shirts while making Parallel mothers, which was set in fashionable Madrid. “She uses clothes almost as a mood-booster for her movie,” writes Rachel Tashjian in another essay. Similarly immersing himself in the film world, John Ford wore a cowboy hat and ornate serape believed to have been given to him by the Navajo community that organized the filming of the film, on the set of his 1956 Western. The search engines.
Hogg opts for a suit not because it makes her look like she’s in charge, but because of how it makes her feel. “A structure holds you together,” he writes. It is about “playing the role of director.”
How Directors Dress: On Set, in Editing, and on the Red Carpet is published by A24 for $40. store.a24films.com