[ad_1]
T.The real star of The Undoing, HBO’s absurd marital melodrama, isn’t Hugh Grant, the Manhattan skyline, or even David Hockney’s couple hanging out in a vast penthouse in episode one. It’s a coat.
Mud green, calf-length, with wide cuffs and a hood, this coat is worn over and over again by the character of Nicole Kidman, a gnomic therapist named Grace, as she floats down Madison Avenue, through Central Park and even into Rikers Prison. Island, pondering her marriage to a man who may or may not have killed her lover with a hammer.
More coats appear. One is red faux fur, built by sewing several coats together. Another is more of a cloak, inspired by the Italian label Etro, but handmade and embroidered with Japanese flowers. But it’s the green coat, which is likely velvet (though it could easily be astrakhan fur, the tightly curled fleece of a newborn lamb), that screams the cold winter elite. And if the internet hasn’t completely broken, it has surely divided it.
Olivia Singer of Vogue is “fascinated” by it, declaring it “an extraordinary example of autumn chic”. Alice Newbold of Vogue calls it “the biggest sin of the program”. The Daily Mail cites “coat couture”, while the New York magazine says it lends Grace “rich witch energy”. Not since Sarah Lund’s The Killing Faroe Sweater has been so much scrutinized as a TV piece of clothing.
The coat was designed for the show by Signe Sejlund, the Danish costume designer who wore Elizabeth Debicki in all those low-cut dresses for The Night Manager. It’s not exactly ugly – that particular shade of green also appeared on the Fendi fall / winter 2020 runway, and it definitely blends in with the elms of Central Park – but it’s conspicuous, a bourgeois and bohemian flashcard meant to differentiate the Kidman character from the ‘Upper 1% of the East Side. Her wealthy whore counterparts wear mostly cream and cashmere, more obvious signifiers of privilege. By contrast, Grace’s weird coat in a weird color “isn’t that easy to read,” says Sejlund.
The show has a lot of fun distorting the look of Manhattan’s elite and the acute intersection of wealth and homogeneity. Glued to her phone in a camel-colored Max Mara coat, Lily Rabe’s attorney Sylvie feels like an adult version of the hideous women outlined in Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is In Trouble, in their Lululemon and RUN THE WORLD, YOUR WORKOUT IS MY WARM UP and KALE slogan t-shirts. Grace’s father, Franklin (Donald Sutherland), is a lesson in consistency and old money, in his bespoke Savile Row suits for which he supposedly flies to London; while Jonathan, the character of Grant, with his Peruvian printed scarf, heavy wool coat and aversion to the black tie, is a mess; a middle-class intruder who has made his way into a different world.
With her Botticelli hair, piles of rings and non-electric toothbrush, Grace is channeling the “ free spirit, ” but she is a capitalist at heart, with a personal trainer and driver, hiding in the Upper East Side building. of his billionaire father and refuses to donate something to the same fundraiser he is organizing. And as such, he dresses as such. The coat that looks like a dressing gown? £ 3,000, Max Mara. The burgundy Phillip Lim coat, a cut at £ 1,500. Roksanda’s flowing purple dress worn to court to invite sympathy, a paltry £ 995. Oh, and the rings are Cartier.
“There is definitely a form of bohemian fashion in being able to socially and economically allow yourself to experiment and not need to formally introduce yourself,” says Susanna Cordner, head of the archive at the London College of Fashion. The Givenchy metallic pleated dress Grace wears to a fundraiser looks stylishly illuminated but still costs £ 6,775. “The bohemian style may be a rebellion against the status quo, but it is pampered.” Her rival in love, Elena, wears a Greek-style dress not unlike the same, even though hers costs $ 150 (£ 110).
The last few months have been a curious time for fashion on TV, particularly when it comes to dressing rich and despicable – see Succession and its Lanvin trainers and Loro Piana dresses for stealthy wealth, or neutrals and athleisure by Big Little Lies. Not simply because television is the only real way to see something new or worn by anyone other than your roommates, but because most of what we are watching now was filmed before the pandemic; most of Grace’s wardrobe comes from the fall 2018/19 runways.
In a year shaped by what he lacked – being outside, dressing, touching – the coat is a tactile artifact, a portal into an unknown world full of cashmere, whiteness and richness. And a bad one for that.
Source link
