by Veryan Zimber
Cruella De Vil is one of the most iconic villains in Disney history, known for her spiky demeanour that transcends into her outfits which shape her as a character.
The only thing that is not explored in One Hundred and One Dalmatians is how she became the evil, twisted, and extravagantly dressed person that we see in the film.
In comes the 2021 film Cruella. Providing the origin story of Estella a young and bodacious girl who has an eye for fashion from an early age, we see her alter ego Cruella form and come out when she gets angry or frustrated.
Within the first moments of the film, you see Estella at school and swiftly flipping her blazer inside out to reveal her hand drawn patterned lining, displaying a pure and unapologetic parade of individuality.
Costuming in films has long been an addition to evoke feelings and expressions and Cruella did that and certain looks seem very Vivienne Westwood-esque.
Looking deeper into the film, costume designer Jenny Beavan created mood boards not only of the late Dame Vivienne Westwood but also Alexander McQueen, showing the vision for the costumes was to unequivocally reflect not only her personality but the uniqueness of Cruella.
The refreshing thing about this story, is we see reworked looks deconstructed from thrift store finds which is a very current topic in today’s world.
In one of the scenes we see what looks like rubbish bags and old newspapers fall from the back of a rubbish truck and then Emma Stone appears amongst all the trash, to reveal a dress with a 40ft train as the rubbish truck pulls away with Cruella on the back and the dress trailing behind her.
In the story, the dress is made from one of the Baroness’s outdated collections – drawing from the expression, “One woman’s trash is another women’s treasure.”
Cruella has forty-seven looks in the film, according to Jenny Beavan and when designing the outfits she had to take into consideration that it was set in the 1970s and that she would have created looks from vintage stores before she had money.
This meant that Beavan scouted vintage stores and fairs in London, LA, and New York to find pieces that worked with the aesthetic and era of Cruella.
It turns out that this process was a foundation exercise to work out the basis of the looks because none of the vintage outfits found were used in the film, they were instead a guideline, so they knew the direction they were going to take.
There are so many iconic looks throughout the film one of the main ones is the red gown that is revealed when Cruella sets fire to her cape, and it disappears to reveal the dress.
Within in the story it turns out to be a design of the Baroness and Cruella finds it in a vintage store and reconstructs it to add her own flare.
This dress was based on Charles James 1955 design ‘Tree’ dress. His passion was recreating the shape of the body through corsetry, meaning his designs accentuated the shape of the hips and pulled in the waist, creating a flattering body skimming look. The skirt flutes out from the knee to the floor and he named the dress ‘Tree’ because it mimics the plant, with how roots splay out from the ground.
A costume department goes through such a lengthy process when creating looks for the silver screen, but this one seems much more challenging because there were so many pieces that needed to be intricate yet extravagant and needed to cover entire cars, for instance.
The look that especially had a Vivienne Westwood flare was the outfit that Cruella wore when stood on the Baroness’ car.
Beavan said that it was a tricky design because the skirt part needed to be light enough that Stone could wear it but heavy enough that she could swoosh it over the car and yet it had to be enormous to cover the car.
It took a few versions of the design to get it right with the first few being just too heavy. In the end they went with a design by costumer Kirsten Fletcher who is no stranger to making items for theatre and film.
Beavan also drafted in the help of students to hand-sew petals onto the skirt, in total there were 5,060 petals!
The skirt was just one feature of this design and if then look closely at the jacket element of this look, its nothing short of a masterpiece.
A beautiful military jacket adorned with chains, a gold rope design and epaulets with miniature horse and carriage on each shoulder, its such an interesting piece close-up but also a spectacular statement look from a distance which just shows the sheer talent of the designers who collaborated to create this.
Cruella is not the only one who has glorious designs to wear, the Baroness played by Emma Thompson also wears glamourous gowns and jackets, but her style is very much from a different era.
In comparison her looks could be described as that of the 50s and 60s, still with incredible lines and shapes but more softened. The Baroness’ style influence was that of Dior and so her looks were not as bold or outrageous but still extremely glamorous.
They both had a colour palette, with the Baroness having muted browns and golds and Cruella having the iconic black and white with spattering’s of grey and then red for the pivotal scenes.
All this plays into the personality of the characters and what feelings are conjured when they appear on the screen and the subconscious influence of colour and texture creates elements of the story.
This is one of the most flamboyantly fashionable films of our time and it added so many fanciful layers to one of the most recognisable Disney villains.
Glorious and unrestrained, the outfits were what you could imagine seeing on a red carpet or more likely at The Met Gala.
Amidst these jaw-dropping costumes, created was an origin story that made you empathise with Cruella; as person acting out from a place of hurt and loss, feelings everyone can relate to.
The reality is she started out as a kid with a dream and despite the traumas of life, she pushed through and made it happen, while getting a bit of revenge along the way, in true villain style.