Thread by @thetimes

Director Ridley Scott and costume designer Janty Yates tell The Times how they created the film’s wardrobe. thetimes.co.uk/article/the-fa…

“The dressing certainly promised to be interesting,” says Ridley Scott. “And the period the film covers — the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties — I went right through that lot because of my age. So it was very simple for me.”

Scott’s costume designer was his long-time collaborator Janty Yates. “Ridley and I would look at each other and go, ‘Well, we were there,’” she says, “because we are both ancient.” She laughs.

The creative process for House of Gucci started, as it always does on a Scott film, with the director’s sketches. “I am an art school kind of geezer, so I can still really draw,” he says proudly.

Yates perused photographs of Reggiani back in the day and also today, when — having spent 17 years in prison — she can occasionally be seen again on the streets of Milan, accessorising her ensembles not only with copious bling but with her pet parrot on her shoulder.

Yates recalls that she said to Scott, “‘Do you want us to do her like Joan Collins?’ He said, ‘No, I want her to be a little more discreet, like Gina Lollobrigida.’ But Lollobrigida was Sixties, so we took things from photos of her and adapted them.”

“She did represent a certain kind of arriviste young Italian girl.”

For Reggiani, think more is more, always. Think jewels and cleavage, plus that double-G monogram worked to within an inch of its life.

Gaga was “completely collaborative”, Yates recalls, “but she also just let us get on with it”.

Before filming started, the pair were stuck on either side of the Atlantic. “We pretty much took her measurements off the internet.”

Recently Gaga told Vogue that she “lived as her [Reggiani] for a year and a half. And I spoke with an accent for nine months of that.” Yates concurs. “She was-a like-a this-a, all the time,” she laughs.

Read more: thetimes.co.uk/article/the-fa…