By Jackie Shannon
“I never loved Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and I know that’s like sacrilege, but I think it’s because it was such a stretch for me to see myself in Audrey Hepburn,” Greta Gerwig tells FilmInk. “She was so beautiful and elegant and brunette and European, and I felt like I didn’t have any point of entry. But there was something about someone like Melanie Griffith…even though I don’t feel like Melanie Griffith, there was a messiness and wildness about her that I felt more connected to.”
Greta Gerwig is no Audrey Hepburn. She’s far too funky for that, and in her relatively short but instant classic studded film career, she’s made what her characters wear just as important as what they say and do. Often rocking vintage wear, Gerwig’s often manic and freewheeling characters have a suggested rather than overt sexuality. “Sexiness in films is usually so ham-fisted,” the actress tells FilmInk. “Movies are mainly made by men, who are like, ‘That’s so sexy! Tits and stuff!’ And you are like, ‘That’s not sexy for a woman! It’s sexy for you maybe, but for us, it’s not!’ People have gotten less creative about it too, because everything is so shown now, and everything is so all out. Just remembering what can be is quite sexy.”
When FilmInk sat down with the 32-year-old at The Berlin Film Festival to chat about her latest film, Maggie’s Plan, Gerwig described the process of finding who her characters are through what they’re wearing. “We already had this idea of how Maggie dressed, and I said that she would have a full on nightgown! Like a full, crazy nightgown,” Gerwig laughs. “And then we were playing around with what that would be, and we decided that it would be very sexy if he [Ethan Hawke’s character] unbuttoned the whole thing, basically without touching her. Ethan was like, ‘Is that sexy, or is that not sexy?’ And when we were shooting it, all the women were crowded around the monitor, and they were like, ‘Yes!’ Because a guy who takes the time to unbutton every single button on that nightgown, without touching a woman…well, that’s a guy that you want to be fucking!”
But this isn’t the first character that Greta’s played with an overactive wardrobe, with many roles, from Damsels In Distress to Lola Versus, using Gerwig’s costuming as a way of expressing character. “I don’t think I come across as somebody who cares about fashion, but I really love fashion,” Gerwig told Elle in 2012, pointing at what makes her sense of style so engaging and specific: she knows what fashion is, but she’s not a slave to it. “I’m a huge fan of designers and models. I know all their names. I like Doutzen Kroes and Arizona Muse. My favourite is Raquel Zimmermann; her face is so aristocratic.”
In short, there’s something effortless about Greta Gerwig’s brand of style. “I’ve never been fashionable or cool,” she told Time Out in 2012. “I’m too sincere to be a hipster. I go to the gym and read self-help books. I feel like a hipster girl doesn’t work at it. They just ride their old bikes around New York looking awesome. It’s summer and they’re not sweating. I sweat. And if you sweat, you can’t be a hipster.”
GREENBERG (2010) Here, Gerwig stars as the youthful Florence Marr – whose free spirit is reflected in her clothing – opposite Ben Stiller’s hilarious misanthrope, Roger Greenberg. “I’m really interested in characters that have an idea of how they’d like to be perceived in the world, and how that contrasts with how they really are,” the film’s director (and Gerwig’s partner and collaborator), Noah Baumbach, told FilmInk. “I’m extremely interested in that struggle, so that was a major theme of Greenberg.”
NO STRINGS ATTACHED (2011) More sartorially provocative than usual, Greta Gerwig features in this contemporary sex comedy as Patrice, the more interesting friend to the film’s leading lady, Emma (Natalie Portman). “We tried to have a lot of raunchy scenes, albeit not shot explicitly,” director, Ivan Reitman, told FilmInk of the risqué comedy. “We were more interested in working with the ensemble cast than having to talk them into showing parts of themselves.”
ARTHUR (2011) In Arthur, Gerwig plays Naomi, the free-spirited New York tour guide and aspiring writer who wins the heart of Russell Brand’s boozy, irresponsible rich kid. Sporting more scarves, hats, and belted dresses than Nina in Offspring, she’s a picture of free-flowing boho chic. “I feel sad now that’s gone,” Russell Brand told She Knows of how he felt after he’d auditioned with Gerwig. “She has a wide range of ideas and peculiar choices, but good peculiar, in a magical way.”
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS (2011) Set at an upper-crust East Coast college during the seventies, Damsels In Distress follows the exploits of a trio of self-serious female students, led by Gerwig’s Violet Wister (Greta Gerwig), as they attempt to revolutionise campus social life. Perfect for the film’s period setting, Gerwig’s vintage look is given full bloom. “The American schools had been all-male or all-female until the seventies, and when they went co-educational, there was a void for the women,” the film’s director, Whit Stillman, told FilmInk, “so in a way, that gave them an opportunity for creativity.”
TO ROME WITH LOVE (2012) In Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love, Gerwig’s Sally is an American living in Rome with her boyfriend, Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), who sports a casual but perfectly put together look. “I always idolised Woody Allen as a writer, and when he said, ‘Oh, just say whatever you want’, I thought, ‘I can’t say whatever I want. Woody Allen wrote this!’”
LOLA VERSUS (2012) Left three weeks before her wedding, Gerwig plays Lola, a newly single thirty-something coming to terms with her frightening but exciting new life, which is exemplified by her fresh, funky wardrobe. “Making the movie was a huge amount of fun because there was so much to do,” Gerwig told Elle in 2012. “Every day, I got to run and cry and yell at someone and laugh and have fake sex! We shot during the summer and it was so hot. I was constantly sweating and crying! It felt cathartic, like I was really able to let go.”
FRANCES HA (2012) In this monochromatic beauty, Frances (Gerwig) is an eclectic New Yorker with dreams of becoming a dancer. Draped in easy, casually flowing shirt-dresses and tights, Gerwig’s wardrobe is perfect for a character who defines herself through movement and physicality. All of which is helped immeasurably by the film’s romantic black & white cinematography. “I knew that it would make cinema out of an intimate story,” the film’s director, Noah Baumbach, told FilmInk. “It would celebrate Frances.”
MISTRESS AMERICA (2015) As Tracy’s (Lola Kirke) out-there stepsister, Gerwig’s Brooke is all charm. “There were lots of different influences, like the wild girls from the eighties, like Melanie Griffiths and Rosanna Arquette,” Gerwig told FilmInk of the inspirations behind the footloose and fancy free Brooke, whose attitude is reflected in her wardrobe, which is funky, but a little more refined than the usual Gerwig get-up, thanks to the character’s affluence. “They were the type that would take a typically square, straitlaced uptown person and drag them into their crazy underworld. They were a bit dangerous, and they seemed like they were living on the wrong side of the law.”
MAGGIE’S PLAN (2015) In her latest film, Maggie’s Plan, Gerwig stars as Maggie, a young independent New Yorker who, instead of waiting for the perfect man, decides to try artificial insemination and have a child on her own. In this big-hearted comedy, Gerwig’s studied rocking of perfectly picked vintage pieces hits its apex. “In terms of what she wears, and her costumes, that was very much a conception of the costume designer, in conjunction with me and Greta,” the film’s director, Rebecca Miller, tells FilmInk. “We just needed to figure out the logic of, ‘Okay, this is a woman who doesn’t really have very much money, and she’s buying stuff from vintage stores, but she also has to function in an office environment. She has this kind of modesty, and this old-fashioned quality about her, that makes her special. So it’s kind of like figuring out all those signs.”
Maggie’s Plan is in cinemas now.
