Power Suits, Revisited
Behind every well-dressed man, there's a great woman. And her name is Ellen Mirojnick.
The veteran costume designer has been in the business a long time: She's designed for films ranging from Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and Showgirls to Starship Troopers and Solitary Man—and was nominated for a BAFTA award for her work costuming Robert Downey Jr. as the famous tramp in the period piece Chaplin.
Come September 24, you'll see this New York native's latest handiwork in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the much-anticipated follow-up to Oliver Stone's 1987 Wall Street. Gone are the suspenders. Instead you'll see Gordon Gekko and company looking sharp in crisply tailored handmade suits. A glass of scotch remains in hand, of course. That's timeless.
We caught up with the woman who's dressed some of the best-looking men and women in Hollywood to see how it's done.
Style Section L.A.: What was it like to work on the Wall Street sequel, 20-plus years after the original?
Mirojnick: Gordon Gekko is an iconic character, by what he looks like and what he represents. But it's 23 years later. And we thought it would be ridiculous to keep winking at the past without allowing the characters to grow. So no suspenders, no white collars or cuffs. It's an emotional story you're going to watch. You don’t want to be taken out of the story; you really want to sink your teeth into these characters and what's happened that many years after greed was good. I call it "the end of the gilded age" in New York in 2008. It's all glittery, it's all spectacle. What that looked like before it came crashing down had to be taken into consideration.
GOLDEN COSTUMER: Ellen Mirojnick (photo: Rachel Hudgins)
How does your work compare to the original '80s film?
When I did the first Wall Street, it was not a movie where we got together and said, "Let's change the face of men's fashion." I had worked with Michael Douglas two months prior on Fatal Attraction. Subsequently, at that time there was an image I had in my head and I wanted to create to help Michael become Gordon Gekko, and that was of an old Hollywood movie star. Kind of the seduction of Cary Grant, old Hollywood glamour. And he looked really sexy, and that power of seduction jumped off the screen. He was the bad guy and every guy aspired to be him. That became a bit of a phenomenon, and he became iconic. Now, Gordon Gekko has lived quite a life and has been in jail and takes another turn in his life, and with that he becomes another shade of shark.
ORIGINAL EXCESS: Wall Street posse in the seminal '80s film
Let's talk about designing for Carey Mulligan's character in the new film. What influenced the design for Gekko's daughter?
She's adorable and fresh, as Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine were fresh. Carey's character needed to be American. She's not a hipster, but she runs this underground site that's quite important in the story. With her, as with every other girl in New York who's 23, they all have style. It's hard to take style away from her.