Lopez agrees. “Viola definitely dresses the part,” she says. “She is in costume in her daily life, and it’s intimidating. The woman is impeccable all the time, even when she goes to bed.”
As for Charlie’s style, Barrett not only had to look to develop her character, but also her character’s talent as a designer. “They threw me a curve ball after we’d been prepping for a while when I learned that Charlie was a secret fashion designer,” Barrett says. “I decided that she had to be quintessentially L.A., with a little flavor of Hollywood past. Hers had to echo the fashion on the street, be reflective of her character, and of Jennifer Lopez. So I started from what looked good on her and tried to work out how she would market a line of clothes based on her character. I think we captured the feeling of a California flower child with the old Hollywood ingénue.”
Lopez describes Charlie’s style as “very L.A., very bohemian and hip, but functional.”
“Kym helped us to complete the characters,” says Robert Luketic. “In Viola’s case, we sense the madness and eccentricity. There’s something very Sunset Boulevard about her. Similarly, Kim worked closely with Jennifer to crate this fresh, contemporary look for Charlie that was accessible and not overly styled, something that a young woman who lives in Venice Beach would wear. There’s an element of youthful fun.”
Fonda has worked with some of the best and most famous costume designers in the business, from Edith Head and Orry Kelly to Ann Roth, Pierre Balmain and Paco Rabanne. But in a time where many costume designers are glorified shoppers with little to no education in art or design, Fonda was delighted to meet Barrett.
“I saw her sketches and then I met this young punk, with spiked blonde hair in a dress and combat boots,” Fonda says. “Her designs were like stepping into a new world, which was great. Viola’s clothes are out of the ‘50s, very Suzy Parker; they were perfect. I love the clothes and I love Kym.”
Almost every detail of Viola’s outfits was created from scratch. “Kym builds clothes the way they used to in the old days when I started out,” says Fonda. “It was one of the exciting things about Hollywood back then. You’d go to the wardrobe department at the studio and there’d be 40 seamstresses, and these dummies from the tiniest to the shapeliest, from Audrey Hepburn to Marilyn Monroe. I used to walk through and ask, ‘Who’s that? And who’s that?’ They made clothes for them all.”
Barrett also designed much of the jewelry used in the film. Two pieces in particular stand out within the storyline, a hippo pin and a crucifix. “Dana Schneider made those for me,” says Barrett. “The hippo pin was an especially strange piece to make and I didn’t want it to be too ugly that you couldn’t possibly wear it. At the same time, it had to be comical and strange. The crucifix also needed to be very overdone to serve its purpose.”
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