Sex Bots and Audrey Hepburn: The Costumes of COMPANION
An interview with Vanessa Porter, the film's costume designer.
Warning: Spoilers for Companion throughout.
If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I am at the movies a lot – at least once a week, on a good week, more than that in the lead up to award season. I have the Alamo Drafthouse Season Pass1, so I’ll see any movie I have even the slightest interest in.
I went to see Companion because I like Jack Quaid. Literally, that’s it! I was like, “Oh, Jack Quaid is in this? Love that guy2,” and my butt was in a seat. And you know what? I loved it. I genuinely had so much fun watching Companion, and I came out a huge fan of Sophie Thatcher’s as well.
Going in completely blind, in my opinion, is the best way to see Companion – so if you’re interested in that experience, skip this newsletter until you go watch it (and do that immediately, btw, it’s on streaming now) and then come back, because I’m going to spoil the shit out of it. I’m serious! You’ve been warned. 3…2…1…
Companion is a movie centered around Iris (played by Thatcher), who is essentially a very fancy, emotionally advanced sex robot who doesn’t know she’s a sex robot. Bleak! Her boyfriend Josh (played to incel perfection by Quaid; did I mention I love Jack Quaid?) brings her along on a weekend with friends and things go very wrong very quickly when Iris accidentally kills someone. There are so many twists and turns in this movie and each one is more delightful than the last. You think you know what the movie is and then BAM! it’s another thing.
Of course, costumes play a huge part of telling Iris’s story. She’s a doll dressed to fit Josh’s fantasies of an ideal woman, wearing lots of ‘60s-inspired prints and silhouettes. (I wanted to copy every single one of her looks and I will discuss that in therapy, I promise.)
I saw the movie opening weekend and couldn’t stop thinking about the costume design in Companion, so I finally caved and emailed Vanessa Porter, the film’s costume designer. She was kind enough to hop on a Zoom with me to answer all my burning questions, and I’m sharing our conversation with you! (I’m selfless like that.)
How did you get involved with Companion, and what was appealing to you about the movie?
It came through my agent. I didn't really know anyone on the project, although I found out after that Zach Cregger, who did Barbarian and was a producer on this, was involved, and he and I had worked together on my first job 15 years ago. So that was a funny reunion that was unintentional, but fun.
I've never done something set in the future, so that was a cool thought experiment, to think about how people are going to dress in the future, and why. And the feminist bent to it is appealing for me.
Obviously, Iris is the center of the film. How did those costumes come together? Were you working with Sophie on that?
So Iris’s character is interesting because she doesn't dress herself. Her costumes reflect the wants and desires of Josh, instead of her wants and desires. I hadn't done a character that didn't dress themselves before, and we wanted those costumes to reflect his toxic masculinity. We were thinking about different ways that that could be there, and also, from what Drew [Hancock, writer and director] wrote on the page, it was clear that this character was going to have to dress demure and sweet and soft and non-confrontational; those would be the tenants that Josh would have chosen, and that could be from any era.
Then we narrowed in on pulling from the ‘50s and ‘60s, for a variety of reasons. One, because the clothes from then are more gendered, so there's more subtext there. And then Sophie was cast, and that cemented the idea that we should do something more classic and retro, because that's so her personal aesthetic and it fits her so well; some of the other ideas that we were batting around before she was cast just don't fit with her.
We went down that direction, and we were looking at French New Wave actresses like Anna Karina and Jean Seberg. Then I was thinking about the French New Wave costumes, and how often it's these bold stripes or red, and that didn't really fit with our original conception of Iris being something softer, so then I decided to switch gears a little bit; it's the same general vein, but looking at Audrey Hepburn and some American actresses to get a little bit more of a Americana take on it, a softer take. So then we were looking at ginghams and ballet flats and some of the things that are closer to what we actually did.
At the end of it, I was like, what does it say about me that that's how I want to dress now?
That's been an interesting thing too, because so many people have responded to the film, being like, Oh, where do I get it? I want it. It’s supposed to be a commentary, but I think that's fine. I think that it's about the intention of the wearer. If you’re wearing it because you're trying to please your trad husband or whatever, then that's one thing. But if you're wearing it because you love it and you're an empowered woman wanting to wear it, then great.
I also feel very strongly it's going to be a very popular Halloween costume this year.
I hope so. That would make me really happy.
Where were you getting the stuff for Iris?
We shopped kind of all over, but a lot of her pieces are from Brooks Brothers, which makes sense as a trad thing. Then some French girl aesthetic stores, like Ciao Lucia and Reformation, had the girly looks – I don't think they really do that as much anymore, but at the time, they had it.
What were some of the other ideas that you ended up not going with?
We were looking at soft florals, the same kind of fabrics in more contemporary cuts. We were also looking a little bit at early 2000s references, like Britney Spears, just because she's such an icon of that Girl Next Door trope, which is what we were also thinking of for Iris. We were thinking that if you were a customer of Empathics Robotic Company, you could pick how the robot was going to look, what their personality would be like, and also what sort of package of clothes they would come with, and we were thinking that each package of clothes would be a different trope. So Iris is this Girl Next Door trope, and that's what started me on Audrey Hepburn, also, because she plays this girl next door in the classic film Sabrina.
I'm curious if you planted any easter eggs in the costumes, because it got to the point where I was like, Are the headbands there to cover part of her robotics? I started getting really into it.
Not too many! The headbands are just a Brigitte Bardot callback – although she does get shot in the head. There was a little bit of an Easter egg with Sergei, where he wears a cow print bath robe, and we learn later his profession is that he's a fertilizer mogul.
Sergei was so fun, too. What was the inspiration there?
It's funny: when I read the script, and everyone else read the script, everyone pictured this gross guy, somebody who was going to be physically unappealing. And then they cast Rupert Friend, who's gorgeous, so we had to rethink a little bit and use the costumes, and the hair and makeup, to give him that unappealing quality and that unsettling quality that now wasn't part of the original physicality.
We ended up doing the mullets and adding hair to his chest, and these sleazy costumes – we pulled from the ‘80s and the ‘90s, whereas the robots are pulled from the ‘50s and the ‘60s, and the humans are sort of contemporary. He's this other genre that won't fit in with either other group.
That one gingham costume that Iris wears really goes through the ringer, and I know from a costume design standpoint, that must be a nightmare. How did you plan for that?
You break the script down into phases for the costume – so phase one is before she gets a little bit dirty during the beach rape scene, and then phase two extends until she gets more dirty in the woods, phase three is until she gets really dirty when she falls down the hill. It's breaking it down into different sections, and then each section has its own costume that's distressed to that stage.
I really like Iris as this idealized girl next door compared to Josh, because Jack Quaid does such a good job playing this slimy little worm man who doesn't remotely live up to the expectations that he has for his girlfriend. I'm curious how his costumes played into that idea too, because she's always dressed, she’s always super cute, and he's always just there.
The idea for his costumes is that the main thing he's trying to communicate is that he's non threatening – which, of course, is not true – but he’s an every man, non-threatening, just a guy, and then he ends up being so much more toxic.
But overall, we were playing with ideas about artificiality. So of course, the robots are supposed to feel more artificial, but I wanted it to be uncanny – she is played by a real human. I wanted the costumes to be artificial in the sense that they're so matched: her headband matches her shirt matches her shorts matches her shoes, which is very artificial feeling. But then, actually, all the pieces are things that you can just buy at the store. They're not vintage, and they're not built. They're really things that you can, and that girls do, buy and wear, which I think lent an uncanny feeling to her.
Then for Josh and the other humans, we want them to feel normal, not artificial. But Drew's idea for the future was that there was a little bit more artificiality in general in the future than there is now – everybody's a little bit more dressed, a little bit more put together than real life now, because they're more aware of their presentation and social media and whatever in the future.
Obviously the the purchaser picks the wardrobe for the robot, so I'm curious what Patrick's story is.
We did a similar thing, but we were saying that his trope would be that he's the Bad Boy – which he ends up not really being, but that's what Eli was trying to pick. We based it on Marlon Brando, so he's wearing dark jeans and boots and these things that have a little bit of a ‘50s push to them.
I loved the their meet cute scene with the dinosaur costume.
Because they're fabricated memories, we wanted those scenes to feel especially artificial and produced, so the costumes in this Halloween party are not like things would people would wear to a regular Halloween party; it doesn't look like friends at a Brooklyn Halloween party, it looks kind of like The Sims version, where there's these very iconic, very put together costumes.
The Sims version is such a good way of putting that, because it doesn't feel real.
Yea, so all the costumes are very basic, from a catalog kind of feeling.
At the end of the movie, Iris gets to pick her own clothes; obviously, I know she's pulling from what's available to her in the house, but what was the thinking there?
It's supposed to feel like a rebirth, and her getting her agency, so she picks something that's completely opposite to the old Iris; instead of lace and and pastel, it's black and leather. And it's really as simple as that. But it's her first time choosing things, so I think it's okay if it's kind of simple too.
Then she passes another Iris in a car, and that Iris looks different – what was the vibe on that Iris?
That one was like a trophy wife, like a Melania Trump kind of vibe.
What are you most proud of from your work on Companion?
I'm proud that the costumes function in the way that we were hoping they would, where they would contain this commentary, but also be appealing and exciting. The excitement around them has been fun to see.
They were perfect to me. I'm obsessed – clearly, because I'm thinking about it weeks later. I also need the world to keep going. I want to see what Iris does next. I need to file that request.
I hope that they do that. It seems like it could go so many places, because you could have so many different companion characters and whatever.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Currently canceled in support of the workers on strike!
Great in THE BOYS, perfect in the criminally underrated romcom PLUS ONE.
Thank you for this post & interview! I really enjoyed Companion as well and almost want to rewatch it to pay closer attention to the costumes.