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A short film by experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, documenting the lives of predominantly Jewish immigrants on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1955, served as a primary reference point for Josh Safdie and costume designer Miyako Bellizzi when constructing the bustling inner-city world in “Marty ‘Supreme.’
“Obviously, I was looking at the cool young kids,” says Bellizzi Variety about the short film, which Safdie showed him after discovering it by chance at the Museum of Modern Art.
In the colorized vignette, the boys wear pleated pants, white tank tops, skinny ties, and sleeveless knit vests. The girls wear vintage culottes and t-shirts. “They seem almost contemporary to us,” Bellizzi says, noting that downtown New York was already the epicenter of the style back then. Women didn’t wear pants in the 1950s, but “girls on the Lower East Side did.”
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Atsushi Nishijima
Atsushi Nishijima
The shabby tenements of the Lower East Side — and the distinct fashion that reigns there — are as much a character in A24’s drama as the eponymous ping-pong player himself. In the film, Timothée Chalamet plays the shy, arrogant and delusional ambitious Marty Mauser as he fights for the opportunity to prove his greatness in a sport that no one takes seriously.
Authenticity and historical accuracy are of the utmost importance to Bellizzi and Safdie, who previously worked together on “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time.” For production design, this meant using exactly the right font on a Delancey display case. For costumes, that meant no contemporary brands anywhere.
“Even down to the underwear!” Bellizzi jokes. The women’s tights in the film, for example, come from the Hasidic Jewish Center in Williamsburg.
But once these markers of historical accuracy were established, it was truly a question of inhabiting the spirit of Marty Mauser. “What was he looking at? What were his references? Who did he admire? What were the types of people he saw regularly?” These were the questions on Bellizzi’s mind when building her wardrobe, she says.
The hustler subculture was particularly compelling for Bellizzi, who looked to 20th-century Wise Guy gangsters to evoke Marty’s swagger. This reference ultimately inspired his boxier, oversized suits; Tailored two-piece sets with strong, padded shoulders, in dark colors such as deep charcoal and navy blue, became his uniform for much of the film.
“It’s a bit like dressing for the job you want,” she says. “It’s not even ‘Fake it till you make it,’ it’s just him wanting to show he knows.”
Of course, real-life table tennis sensation Marty Reisman, on whom Marty de Chalamet is loosely based, was also on his mood board. “The real Marty was eccentric, so I wanted to give him a little flair and style without being too stylized,” she says. “It’s quite classic – it’s more in the shapes and the little details.” A notable fashion moment includes a pair of red leather gloves he wears as he shoves a hot dog down his throat in the middle of a busy street.
Of course, it would be remiss to write about the costume design of “Marty Supreme” without mentioning Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), the retired movie star whom Marty intends to seduce. Kay’s refined style – comprised of ivory wool coats, pillbox hats and delicate veils – is the polar opposite of Marty’s aspirations. Although we mostly see her in neutral colors, her most striking ensemble is a red satin evening coat that she wears to the opening of her play — and later, to a secret rendezvous with Marty.
“It was her end when she felt most alive again, and that’s why we chose red,” says Bellizzi. “This dress is her moment. She’s so excited – it’s the party for her big new theater show and then we find out it’s not doing well, she’s not getting good reviews.”
“This emotional, living feeling is destroyed,” she continues. For Bellizzi, this moment almost sums up the entire meaning of the film: “Sometimes you have big dreams for yourself, and sometimes they don’t turn out the way you want them to. »
