Maxance Vincent
Costume designer Loulou Bontemps has been collaborating with director Guy Ritchie on several projects before working on Netflix’s The Gentlemen, most recently in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, starring Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson.
In discussing the ideas of The Gentlemen series with Ritchie, Bontemps tells Awards Radar on Zoom that the two had “countless conversations about everything and nothing. It’s not really fashion that Guy is interested in, but the style: how people wear clothes, what they’re wearing, who wears what.
We have endless conversations about it with different people. When I first got the scripts for episodes one and two, I had to break everyone down. There are so many different characters throughout the whole series, right? You want it to be in this heightened, stylized world. Having already worked with Guy, I still did my research. I rewatched the film, and a lot of his films in the past. I started to notice these common themes of always having a motley crew, and within that motley crew, everyone has their own sense of style. He has all these various different gangs, and they also have their own sense of style. I wanted to pay homage to that, but, simultaneously, create something completely new and unique to me and Guy, but also something people would love in the same world of fashion and style.”
In transposing the world of The Gentlemen from the big to the small screen, Bontemps wanted to pay tribute to several of Michael Wilkinson‘s designs, including the red shoes worn by Michelle Dockery‘s Rosalind Pearson, in the scene where Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) steps into Tommy Dixon’s (Peter Serafinowicz) fish shop:
“In the film, you can see Michelle Dockery’s character walking into her garage and see the red bottom shoes that she wears. We have this wonderful moment in the series where Susie is walking into the fish market to go and meet Tommy Dixon. I insisted we did a tribute there to the red-bottomed shoes. It’s a wonderful scene because she’s wearing these shoes in this filthy, smelly fish market, looking absolutely magnificent. That’s one of the moments I reintroduced into the series as an homage to the film.”
Speaking of Tommy Dixon, in the first episode, Freddy Horniman (Daniel Ings) is forced to record an apology video to him while dressed up as a chicken. We previously spoke to Daniel (here) about the challenges of filming that particular sequence, which sounded pretty wild. In designing this already iconic costume, Bontemps explained that she wanted to do something vastly different and unique for the series:
“I wanted it to pop and be iconic. In the script, it’s constantly referenced as the chicken costume. But there’s this wonderful line that Tommy Dixon says when he’s talking to Susie Glass at the fish market. He says he wants to make Freddy admit that he’s a cock. So I took that line, and said I don’t want to do a chicken costume. It’s boring. I want to do something colorful and outrageous. I was very much inspired by sports mascots and Elton John. I found a beautiful painting of a cockerel that was so colorful and got my making team together to recreate it with an element of fun to it.
We made three of them completely bespoke. I pitched it to Guy and he absolutely loved it, and if Guy loves it, I’m golden. Some producers were slightly nervous about it, which was a bit over the top. But I said, “Trust me. It’s going to be iconic. Everyone’s going to love it.” And it’s amazing when you put Daniel Ings in it with this devastating and utterly hilarious scenario from beginning to end, where you keep jumping around all these different emotions. You’re laughing and are then like, “Oh, my God, this is terrible.” until you’re laughing again. It’s a combination of the costume that Daniel is wearing while also slaying that whole scene that made it completely iconic.”
One of the most interesting elements of The Gentlemen‘s costume design is how it tracks the evolution of each protagonist, and it is extremely apparent through Eddie Horniman’s (Theo James) journey within the show. In the first episode, he wears a military uniform before returning home to be with his dying father (Edward Fox) and soon be thwarted into the “family business.”
In tracking that journey, Bontemps explained that everyone’s assumption for the show would be that James’ character from the very beginning, but is not at all that character when we first meet him as a soldier, with the costumes playing an integral part of how the character evolves:
“Guy very much wanted him to go through this journey. The costumes are a huge part of that. The first time we see him, he is in his soldier gear. When he comes home, he’s dressed as this humble soldier, with hiking clothes that he’s wearing for function, not for fashion. Slowly, he’s fighting it, but he’s evolving from this humble soldier into this gentleman gangster by hanging out with people like Susie, going into these balls, hanging out with all these aristocrats, and being back home again. I think what’s interesting about fashion and people’s sense of style is you try to mimic your surroundings. He’s slowly evolving and discovering that gentleman gangster within him, from the humble soldier to wearing these beautiful, bespoke suits.”
We also discussed working with Kaya Scodelario on building Susie Glass’ wardrobe, how Freddy’s looks evolved after his chicken suit scene, crafting the bespoke outfits of both Ray Winstone‘s Bobby Glass and Giancarlo Esposito‘s Stanley Johnston (with a T), while also talking about some of her favorite looks from the series.
You can listen to my full interview with Loulou below and see all episodes of The Gentlemen on Netflix today:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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