We Know What You Wore This Summer

What happens when young stars don't groove to the instincts of the costume designer? Jacqueline Arthur Abish believes that when teen idol Devon Sawa sent her back to the drawing board during the making of yet another high school thriller, Idle Hands, it actually worked to the advantage of the film. "Part of the game for the costume designer is making an actor comfortable, so when someone comes in and says, 'This isn't what I was thinking of,' we definitely have to take that into consideration. The whole idea of the movie is that a bunch of stoner kids are thrown into a loop by this guy who has devil hand on him. Devon wasn't thrilled with the director's original idea of putting him in lots of green. I had gotten him 20 green shirts and 20 corduroy pants, but then he didn't feel comfortable in a washed-out green flannel T-shirt and cords, so I ended up putting him in a gray Gap T-shirt, baggy Gap jeans and Airwalks. He also wore Pacific Sunwear. Some of what we did on Devon has the same feel as the Venice Board-walk tie-dyed stuff I see so many kids running around in today--a bit stoner, a bit surf, a bit skate. But Devon's look is a little cleaner.

"I put Jessica Marie Alba [of TV's Flipper] in a lot of Rampage," continues Abish, "the kind of stuff you find in Macy's Juniors department. Although she does wear some great, higher-end leather pants from Diesel and a beautiful print nylon tank by Vivienne Tam, aside from those items, I mostly put her into sexy, cute, affordable things people can relate to, though we stayed away from being too trendy."

Later this year the sequel to the surprise hit of last year, I Know What You Did Last Summer, will hit screens with seasoned young-fashion savvy. The action for I Still Know What You Did Last Summer takes place in a tropical resort where the in-crowd gal played by Brandy has taken a bunch of her pals after winning a contest. "These movies tend to be action-oriented, so you can't just go for pretty or stylish because the characters have to do a lot of running, hiding and jumping," says costume designer Dan J. Lester. "These movies also tend to be confined to a few days' time so we tried to choose pieces that quickly defined the characters." On a similarly practical note, Lester comments, "We feature great-looking kids with great bodies, something that audiences like to look at."

Tropical resort location notwithstanding, I Still Know is not a candy-colored, jiggly Beach Blanket Bloodbath. "The director wanted to stay away from the bright, garish colors you normally see in a summer resort," explains Lester. "We went instead with burgundy and black-based clothes, even when we show the resort staff. That whole approach almost gives the movie the sensibility of a black-and-white movie."

The big draw here, of course, is the striking, likable heroine played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, whose career was sent soaring by the original film. "The look for Jennifer is classic, all-American, sort of a younger version of what you see in Ann Taylor. Jennifer is very tiny, a size two petite, so we had to find things that fit her. Basic stuff we got at Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Barneys and vintage places in L.A., like American Rag Cie and Jet Rag. We settled on various pieces from Laundry, some Guess?, a little French Connection, a little Club Monaco and we went a little bit upscale with a pretty spring dress from Armani." Then there was the bikini. "Love's got a fabulous body but she's very modest. She's big on top, so we had to do a little to work with the Evan-Picone bikini we got her."

Lester took the same care with the rest of the cast. "We put Brandy in a Missoni dress and a cowboy hat in one scene, and for another, we had some suede pants made to go with a Mossimo top. The character played by Matthew Settle is a guy who's interested in Jennifer's character and wants to help her forget the bad stuff from the first movie. He's supposed to be kind of in the background, so we purposely kept him down tonally in washed-out colors, like J. Crew or Gap. Mekhi Phifer, who plays Brandy's main squeeze, is supposed to be hipper, more urban, so he's in Donna Karan pieces and some Nike urban wear."

Another much-anticipated late '98 entry into the young shocker sweepstakes, Urban Legend, is set at a college where Jared Leto and Alicia Witt, among others, begin to believe that apocryphal campfire horror stories are coming true. "The idea," declares costume designer Mary Claire Hannan, "was to do very hip, trendy, happening clothes on a cross section of characters who are very smart, very aware, and represent a spectrum of the young generation who will all go in different directions with their lives." For Jared Leto's character, Hannan designed a look that would underscore an interest in journalism. "I created a backstory for him where he was kind of an activist and idealist, carrying on his family's tradition by wearing his father's old college sweaters from the '60s and a vintage Vietnam-era army jacket, all of which I got everywhere--on Melrose, at army surplus stores, at vintage stores like American Rag Cie and Jet Rag, and at costume houses in Los Angeles and Canada."

Leto's character stands apart from the party guy played by Michael Rosenbaum, who wears custom-made "10-year-old-looking fraternity shirts," and a beat-up motorcycle jacket and motorcycle boots from vintage stores, and new jeans from BigStar. Joshua Jackson, who plays the skateboarder-type student, wears Mossimo, Stussy and Burton.

According to Hannan, the producers requested that the women in the movie "look very stylish, each in her own way, and very sexy and appealing to the audience." Alicia Witt gets to bite into a juicy character Hannan describes as "apparently more stable and pulled-together, with a very 'straight' silhouette. I dressed her more 'standard American girl' generic, in lots of soft cotton--Gap, Banana Republic, and, particularly, specially fit Replay jeans, because Alicia, like most other girls in the movie, has just an incredible figure and I couldn't use a more generic 'college' jean." As the plot thickens, says Hannan, Witt's character "gets more and more paranoid, so the colors of her clothes get brighter, while her silhouette gets tighter, more tense, sexier, less cotton and more Lycra. That means you have to go to higher designers and lines, and I used lots of Donna Karan and Calvin Klein."

Rebecca Gayheart, whose character the designer describes as "less uptight and more sporty than Alicia Witt's" is supposed to be the healthy, well-rounded girl on campus who seems to get along with everybody. "I mixed cute little sporty T-shirts and tops from Fred Segal with Nike pants and Replay jeans," explains Hannan.

In one scene, Hannan makes Gayheart appear older than her college years by dressing her in a sexy black top and matching cardigan. But although the pieces look expensive, both are from the racks of Urban Outfitters. On a different note is the edgy sexpot college radio DJ played by Tara Reid [from The Big Lebowski]. "Tara is a stunning, voluptuous girl and she's great in the part," says Hannan. "Every one of her outfits is a new 'scene' because she's always 'on,' a starlet in her own campus world. She begins at the radio station in a very bold vintage 'disco' outfit but in class she wears a creation by Todd Oldham, who this year used lots of darker, autumn shades with a little bit of edgy gold threading running through the fabric. Her shoes are platforms that I got in a gothic clothing store in Canada."

If it seems that Hannan and a few of the other costume designers have managed to slip a bit of high fashion into their slasher films, it's not a mistake. Hannan believes that the symbiotic subcouture reigning at the moment won't necessarily go away, but will be joined by a greater resurgence of designer duds. "We glamorized gangster movies, and now we're doing it with horror movies," she asserts. "Though it's not like movies 20 or 30 years ago--today it's a more shoot-from-the-hip, get-the-audience-to-relate-to-it approach. I worked on Pulp Fiction and Uma Thurman was very high style in that. Sharon Stone and Madonna are constantly going for a more high-fashion look. Gretchen Mol in_ Music from Another Room_, which I worked on, is very Grace Kelly--tight cashmere sweaters, long, 'pencil' skirts out of the romantic, sexy '50s. The big difference is that now, you show high style on an Uma or Sharon and, in the same frame, there are more edgy, urban characters as well." One way or another, Hannan believes, "more and more, audiences are going to see beautiful-looking people dressing really well." They just won't be able to go buy that look for themselves.

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Jenny McCarthy for the August '98 issue of Movieline.

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