<i>Wall Street</i> Costume Designer Talks to Esquire

Less than two weeks left! I'm not going to add too much of my own commentary, but it was really interesting to hear Ellen Mirojnick's thoughts about her costume designs for Wall Street and its upcoming sequel. The fascinating thing is thinking about who the characters are, what place and time they're in, and then thinking about how you reflect that in their clothes—how does that translate into wardrobe design. The contrast that I noted earlier, for example, between Gekko's casual clothes and his suits, is actually an evolution of his character over the course of the film. The casual clothes are at the beginning, when we first meet him and when he first meets Jacob Moore. He's lost his way a little bit. And so when he gets out of the off-the-rack stuff (Canali, e.g.) and back into the custom-made suits, it's a stylistic homecoming, but also a renaissance: he has to evolve. As Mirojnick says,

I didn't want to put him in contrast collar, I didn't want to put him back to exactly what he was. He was a groundbreaker at that time — he was outshining everyone around him — so why would he go back to that? Naturally, as a person of strong personality, such forceful instinct would progress. Sharks need to move forward. If they're not moving forward they're dying.