“The Fall Guy” costume designer Sarah Evelyn received the script long before Oscar nominee Emily Blunt was on board to play Jody, an aspiring film director. As Evelyn thumbed through the pages, she was attracted to the idea of how it felt like a classic movie with a prototypical underdog.
In putting Jody’s looks together, Evelyn began looking at ‘80s icons like Lauren Hutton and Brooke Shields. Then, she took stock of some famous female directors’ wardrobes.
“I looked at Kathryn Bigelow and Patty Jenkins, women who direct action. I took a good look at Greta Gerwig because she’s very of the moment,” says Evelyn. Other directors including Agnes Varda also popped into mind, and when Blunt signed on, she too came up with ideas. “She was really well researched and is costume-forward.”
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In the end, they landed on a little bit of everyone, including the men and women they saw around them on “The Fall Guy” set as inspiration for Jody’s style.
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In the film, Ryan Gosling plays veteran stuntman Colt Seavers. After an on-set accident takes him out of action, Colt is soon back at work only to find himself embroiled in a murder plot. In the middle of it all is a romantic comedy story device that finds him trying to win the attention of first-time director Jody Moreno (Blunt).
Evelyn did a lot of vintage shopping at stores around Los Angeles like Wasteland and Jet Rag because she wanted the costumes to be timeless. She also turned to Wrangler and CAT for workwear and would age, rework and even dye the jumpsuits to add more oomph to the pieces.
She found Jody’s trademark pink jumpsuit from Wrangler. Underneath, Evelyn decked Blunt in a Hawaiian shirt and finished the outfit with a big leather belt and Red Wing work boots.
“That [look] came from my heart,” says Evelyn. “The leather belt idea came from the woman who did the leather work on the film. She had this amazing leather belt that she always wore like that, and I said, ‘You’ve got to make one of those for Emily.’” As soon as that outfit came together, she knew they had found Jody. And as with any movie set, Evelyn needed multiples of the jumpsuit “because obviously she gets dirty.”
When it came to Jody’s jewelry, Evelyn kept that at a minimum with a few pieces by Los Angeles-based designers Mara Scalise and Olivia Hateley.
Another pivotal item was Colt’s “Miami Vice Stunt Team” jacket, which is a nod to the film’s director David Leitch.
Colt’s jacket needed to say a lot about the stuntman. Evelyn didn’t want it to be too similar to what Gosling wore in the 2011 film “Drive,” “It needed to be wearable the whole time, but it couldn’t be too much like any other jacket,” she explains.
As Evelyn continued searching for the perfect jacket, Gosling also researched with his stylist Mark Avery, who came to the table with the idea. “They came with a bunch of amazing research, and the jacket was something they had found,” Evelyn reveals. “I saw the jacket and said, ‘That’s epic.’ It turns out David had started in stunt shows, and it just became more of a thing than was in the script.”
She adds: “The ‘Miami Vice’ jacket is the perfect symbol of what it’s like to work on projects with David Leitch. It’s wildly collaborative, it’s the best idea wins, and if there’s a great idea, you’re going to make it work.”
See the inspirations for Jody’s look below:
