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Experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs’ short film that chronicled the lives of mostly Jewish immigrants on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1955 was a key reference for Josh Safdie and costume designer Miyako Bellizzi in building the bustling downtown world of “Marty Supreme.”
“Obviously I was looking at the young, cool kids,” Bellizzi told Variety about the short film. Safdie happened to come across this short film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and showed it to me.
In the colorized vignette, the boys wear pleated pants, white tanks, slim ties, and sleeveless knit vests. The girl is wearing culottes and a vintage T-shirt. “They almost look modern to us,” Bellizzi says, noting that even back then, downtown New York was the center of style. Women didn’t wear pants in the 1950s, but “Lower East Side girls did.”
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Jun Nishijima
Jun Nishijima
The squalid Lower East Side row house and its distinctive fashion are as much characters in the A24 drama as the eponymous ping-pong player himself. The film stars Timothée Chalamet as Marty Moser, a loud-mouthed, arrogant and delusional ambitious man who struggles for a chance to prove his greatness in a sport that no one takes seriously.
Authenticity and historical accuracy are of paramount importance to both Bellizzi and Safdie, who previously worked together on “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time.” For product design, this means using exactly the right font for Delancey’s storefront. When it came to costumes, modern brands were nowhere to be found.
“Even my underwear!” Bellizzi quipped. For example, the women’s tights in the film were sourced from the Hasidic Jewish Center in Williamsburg.
But once the bar of historical accuracy is set, it really comes down to what lives in the mind of Marty Moser. “What was he focused on? What were his criteria? Who did he look up to? What kind of people did he look up to on a regular basis?” These were the questions Bellizzi kept most in mind when building his wardrobe, she says.
The hustler subculture was particularly appealing to Bellizzi. Bellizzi turned to 20th century Wise Guy gangsters to evoke Marty’s gritty swagger. This reference eventually inspired an oversized suit with his boxers. A tailored two-piece set with sturdy, padded shoulders in dark colors such as deep charcoal or navy blue became his uniform for much of the film.
“It’s like dressing for the job you want,” she says. “It’s not even ‘fake it till you get it,’ he just wants to show he knows.”
Of course, real-life table tennis sensation Marty Reisman, the model for Chalamet’s character Marty, also appeared on her mood board. “The real Marty was quirky, so I wanted to give him a little flair and style without being overly stylized,” she says. “He’s pretty classic. It’s in the shape and the little details.” Standout fashion moments include the red leather gloves he wears while shoving a hot dog down his throat in the middle of a busy street.
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Of course, it would be remiss to write about the costume design of Marty Supreme without mentioning Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), the retired movie star Marty is trying to seduce. Kay’s sophisticated style, consisting of an ivory wool coat, pillbox hat, and delicate face veil, is the complete opposite of Marty’s ambitious style. Although we mostly see her in neutral colors, her most striking ensemble is the red satin evening coat she wears at the beginning of the play and later during her secret meeting with Marty.
“That was the ending where we felt the most about her coming back to life, so that’s why we chose red,” Bellizzi says. “This dress is a moment for her. She’s so excited. It’s a party for her big new theater show, and then we find out it didn’t work out and wasn’t getting good reviews.”
“This emotional, alive feeling is destroyed,” she continues. For Bellizzi, this moment pretty much sums up the whole point of the film. “Sometimes we have big dreams for ourselves, but sometimes they don’t turn out the way we want.”
