Luca Guadagnino's Challengers hasn't even premiered and it's already 2024's most stylish movie. With costumes by JW Anderson and red carpet looks courtesy of Anderson's LOEWE, there really isn't much competition.
Admittedly, there also isn't much to go on besides the dribs and drabs gleanable from the Challengers trailer and the stuff that Anderson himself has posted on Instagram prior to the film's April 26 release but it's still a big, stylish deal.
Like, it's one thing to get a stylish red carpet (albeit practically inevitable when Zendaya's involved).
It's another thing for a red carpet to be primarily informed by a single designer: Challenger stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor all wore bespoke LOEWE for the film's first Australian premiere on March 26. Two weeks later, Zendaya upped the ante in another custom LOEWE look, a sparkly tennis dress complete with tennis ball-impaling stilettos.
But it's another thing entirely for the film's stars to be wearing a single designer both on and off-camera, what with their red carpet LOEWE and on-screen JW Anderson costumes.
Challengers is the first major film for which Anderson has done costume design, which adds additional intrigue to the proceedings.
According to IMDB, he's been hard at work on the costumes for the Daniel Craig and Jason Schwartzman-starring Queer, another drama overseen by his pal and Challengers director Luca Guadagnino. (based on a William Burroughs novel, no less!)
But Challengers, what with its surefire Zendaya boost, offers Anderson's burgeoning costume career the most immediate splash.
It's a deservedly face-forward turn for one of fashion's most theatrical designers.
I don't think it's possible to overstate Anderson's impressive resume. The actor-turned-designer is responsible for creating some of the industry's most enjoyable outlandish looks, rooted in his love of art and oddity. Hence the canary clutch, the Wellipets clogs.
But as deliciously unorthodox as Anderson's oeuvre may be, he's also quietly and cannily commercial. Few other designers can so easily flit between runway-ready statement pieces, It bags, and collaborations with the world's most mass retailers. Financials show the power of Anderson's acuity.
What's so exciting about Anderson's work for Challengers is that it underscores underappreciated tenets of his practice. The designer gets a lot of deserved platitudes for his imaginative designs but he deserves ample praise for so potently nailing the saleable side of fashion, too.
He himself wears a uniform of classic Bri'ish sweaters, slim dad jeans, and workaday sneakers, reflective of his personal predilection for real-world wearables.
Anderson's Challengers costumes promise a world of sumptuous staples and stylized athleisure, where crisp polo shirts, collegiate sweaters, pleated shorts, and vareuse pullovers coexist in elegant harmony. Anderson even includes some on-court apparel from his friends at UNIQLO to further integrate his worlds.
This stylish cohesion feels pleasantly at odds with the contentiousness at the core of Challengers' plot: in a nutshell, the movie focuses on a former tennis wiz married to a champion on the decline who must aid her beau beating her former boyfriend and his once-best friend in tennis. Phew.
Whereas interpersonal drama is the name of Challengers game, Anderson's clothes are calmly beautiful, a thematic give-n-take that subtly jars against core tensions.
This pleasant contrast kinda recalls Her, the 2013 Joaquin Phoenix vehicle that featured costume design input from Opening Ceremony. The films are obviously wholly disparate but the idea is similar: beautiful, attractive people struggle with emotions — but not their wardrobes!
A tall order for any costume designer. But also a meaty challenge worthy of a creative at Anderson's level. This is the guy who made clothes of clay. Tennis fashions that're somehow both grounded and glamorous? That's an ace in the making.
