Arianne Phillips on Crafting Wilde's Looks in Two Films
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- Arianne Phillips reunited with Olivia Wilde on both 'The Invite' (which Wilde directed and starred in) and Gregg Araki's 'I Want Your Sex,' their latest collaboration after 'Don't Worry Darling'; Phillips called Wilde 'fearless' and 'brave as an actor,' saying she is 'willing to try anything.'
- For 'The Invite,' Phillips styled Wilde's Angela as a 'frustrated artist' with eclectic Diane Keaton-inspired style, including vintage embroidered cowboy boots, a striped T-shirt, a 1940s jacket, and a mint green blouse paired with a 1970s Hermes Medor watch from Phillips' personal collection.
- Phillips deliberately dressed Angela and Seth Rogen's Joe in clashing blue-green palettes to visually telegraph their marital disconnect, calling it 'off and clashing' because 'there's no real color harmony' in their relationship.
- For Penélope Cruz's sexologist Pina, Phillips sourced rings from L.A. designer Hillary Heydle — including a pearl design and a gold goddess ring with a Botticelli-esque imprint — specifically to catch light on Cruz's expressive hands during the film's intimate shooting style.
- Phillips leveraged her 23-year working relationship with Madonna to place a vintage Rebel Heart Tour T-shirt on Cooper Hoffman's Elliot during a masturbation scene in 'I Want Your Sex,' securing formal clearance with 'all kinds of paperwork and agreements' from Madonna herself.
- Olivia Wilde made sure Phillips received an unusually early 'Costume Designer' title card in 'The Invite's' opening credits — preceding even the editor's credit — a gesture that left Phillips 'gobsmacked' after learning it was 'on purpose.'
- Phillips co-designed 'I Want Your Sex' with Monica Chamberlain, splitting lead duties (Phillips on Erika, Chamberlain on Elliot), with additional T-shirt nods to Phillips' prior work as costume designer on Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.'
Why it matters: Phillips' choice to deliberately mismatch Angela and Joe's color palettes — fighting her own aesthetic — turns wardrobe into a visual thesis on marital estrangement, giving cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra's intimate framing additional subtext. The early title card signals that director Wilde now treats costume design as a co-equal storytelling discipline, not a finishing-credit afterthought.
