There Are No Costume Repeats for Lady Gaga in ‘House of Gucci’

Being dressed to kill takes on a new meaning in the hotly anticipated House of Gucci, which weaves a web of fashion, betrayal, and murder. Ever since the first on-set photos of Lady Gaga and Adam Driver frolicking in Milan hit the Internet, Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Sara Gay Forden’s gripping book of the same name became one of the buzziest movies of 2021. Telling the story of the real-life power grab at the heart of the glamorous dynasty, the murder of Maurizio Gucci (Driver) and the ex-wife (Lady Gaga) who was convicted of this crime—and earned the nicknames the “Joan Collins of Monte Napoleone” and the “Black Widow”—House of Gucci hits theaters this Thanksgiving.

Award season has been set alight by Lady Gaga’s commitment to her portrayal of Patrizia Reggiani—not to mention the drama she is serving on the red carpet—and the sartorial journey is equally mesmerizing. Costume designer Janty Yates has worked with Ridley Scott on over a dozen movies and earned an Oscar in 2001 for their first collaboration, Gladiator. The veteran director turned to Yates to capture the luxe look of this high-end cutthroat world. “I went straight from The Last Duel on to Gucci,” Yates said when she jumped on the phone with ELLE.com the day after the Los Angeles House of Gucci premiere.

It was Ridley Scott’s wife, Giannina Facio, who first brought the project to the filmmaker’s attention after Forden’s book was published in 2001, and it would take 20 years for it to come to fruition. In fact, Yates received the House of Gucci script pre-COVID and got an invaluable start to her research when she visited the Gucci museum in Florence. Then The Last Duel came along, posing another delay. “Matt Damon rings up Ridley out of the blue and says, ‘I’ve written a script, do you want to do it?’” Yates describes. When the pandemic shut down the Last Duel set last spring, the designer used the lockdown period to get “a leg up” on the world of Gucci. The prep process included multiple virtual fittings with stars like Gaga, Driver, Al Pacino, and Jared Leto. Zoom gave Yates the opportunity to collaborate with “LG” (as she affectionately calls Lady Gaga) while they were in different countries.

Below, Yates discusses how she crafted the exclusive world of Gucci using a mix of custom builds, vintage (including archival Gucci pieces and Gaga’s personal collection), and costume house rentals. Plus, the challenges of conceiving three decades’ worth of looks, and the audience response to those first ski chic photos.

Patrizia’s Red Dress

“He couldn’t take his eyes off her,” is how Forden describes the first time Maurizio Gucci sees future wife Patrizia Reggiani at a debutante party in 1970. Yates brought this moment to life with a red interpretation of the revealing, pink figure-hugging long satin dress the real Patrizia wore—complete with bow details.

House of Gucci was shot in sequence over a 43-day period, which meant everything had to work like clockwork with minimal delays (Yates’ cutter began working on the costumes in September 2020 and they didn’t start shooting until the following February). Yates estimates she did over 50 hours of fittings with Lady Gaga (including five Zoom fittings), with extensive work on the red dress that kicks off this romance. “We had eight weeks of building and fittings, it was all made in Calico and then we actually fit the real dress and it looks spectacular,” the designer recalls.

However, when they got to set, Scott was surprised to see the long length of the dress. “I want to see legs,” was his note and a quick alteration was required. “We had to put her on an apple box and we cut 18 inches off the bottom of the dress,” Yates says. “We went on to shoot unhemmed—you hardly even see the hem.” This is what the designer describes as a “Roll with Ridley” moment.

The Lake Como Look

Scott referenced Italian actress-turned-photojournalist Gina Lollobrigida (known to Italians as “La Lollo”) early in the development process as a foundation for Patrizia. “He didn’t want to do meat dresses or anything wild and wacky,” Yates says. The designer was thrilled when Gaga mentioned an inspiration that was even closer to home. “I was kind of nervous about talking to LG about this because I know her taste is wide and huge, but on the very first Zoom we did with Ridley and Giannina [Facio] she said she wanted to dress like her mother,” remembers Yates. “It was wonderful because, obviously, her mother didn’t wear meat dresses, and her mother is 100 percent Italian.”

Patrizia is from a family of modest means far outside the Gucci sphere, so her ensemble at Aldo’s (Al Pacino) Lake Como birthday party is striving for their approval. The “gorgeous fitting” white lace dress and bolero are based on an iconic image of Lollobrigida and it was kismet when Yates’ buyer “happened to find more or less the exact lace” of the original La Lollo look. This sequence features another “Roll with Ridley” anecdote caused by a practical issue with an accessory: “We did have a huge black hat that went with it. It was a straw Yves Saint Laurent, and that was glorious to go with a black belt and the black bag. However, we got there, and he couldn’t actually see her face—quite understandably the hat was gone.”

The Wedding Dress

It is only briefly onscreen in House of Gucci, but Patrizia’s dream bridal gown caused quite the stir when it was snapped on the Rome set back in April. Each piece of lace was appliquéd by hand (as was the Lake Como costume) by cutter Dominic Young and his team. Yates constructed two wedding dresses: One was made last minute to match the simple Gucci gown the real Patrizia wore, whereas the second option dials up the romantic fairytale imagery with a voluptuous silhouette and sweetheart neckline. “Literally, on the day we tried both on and everybody was in the trailer for this—my assistants, her assistants, hair and makeup, her manager—and basically it was a shoo-in,” she says. They said yes to the second dress as it captures the authentically happy period in Patrizia and Maurizio’s relationship. “It looked so beautiful. She looked pretty, naive, and lovely,” adds Yates.

Boucheron and Bulgari offered jewelry for long dresses and special occasions (like the Studio 54 scenes and the Versace show), usually with two security men accompanying each delivery. “At one point we had eight of them hanging around and we never went with any of their jewelry,” Yates laughs. “In fact, we went with some of mine on the wedding day.”

The More Accessories the Better

Patrizia ignored the famous Coco Chanel adage about taking one thing off before leaving the house: “She [Patrizia] wore a huge amount of jewelry and LG was up for that. She’d always put on two necklaces when one wasn’t enough, she’d wear four bangles, and the biggest earrings she could find,” Yates says. As with the garments, there are no repeats when it comes to accessories and the jewelry rental house in Rome had a wide selection to match the demand. “I had something like 20 trays of jewelry we would put out every day for her to select,” she recalls. “Then they would go away into storage with the outfits, which she never wore again.” On most projects, accessories are picked on the day the scene is shot, but the fitting process for Gucci took so long because “we would fine-tune it for each earring, each pair of shoes, each bag, each belt. Everything would be accessorized to the last drop, as it were,” Yates says. It was a challenge, but it also saved time on the shooting days.

Ski Chic

The first official look at Lady Gaga and Adam Driver in House of Gucci sent the Internet into a frenzy and the ski attire established the high-stakes glam. “I went to [Rome costume house] Annamode, I found some ski outfits—the company is called Postscript—they made them for us in Adam’s size, and in LG’s size,” she describes. “The one I found for LG was bright yellow, hideous. I said I think red will be good and checked it with Ridley.” Yates notes she never gave this or Maurizio’s Aran sweater a second thought and says the reaction was “quite extraordinary.”

Suits, Suits Suits

For the majority of the movie, Maurizio’s aesthetic is less luxe-athleisure and more sophisticated suits, particularly as he gains more power within the Gucci business. Custom builds were made for the principal cast and Yates turned to the same New York-based English tailor (he’s Savile Row) she used on American Gangster. For the fitting process that was impacted by the pandemic, “he would follow Adam around America to fit him. He went off to New Orleans.” As Maurizio, Driver has “something like 40 suits.” Yates estimates “I made 14- 15 suits for Al [Pacino] and about the same for Jared [Leto].” Her assistant went to Las Vegas four times for Leto’s fittings and his dandyish pastel suits (that prompts Pacino’s Aldo to comment, “You’re a Gucci, you need to dress that part”) were created by Sartoria Attolini in Naples, Italy. It would be impossible to custom-make suits for every single performer appearing on camera, so Yates pulled stock from costume houses in Rome, London, Paris, and Madrid for approximately 180 actors.

The Archival Looks

Lady Gaga does not repeat a single look in the entire movie (there are an estimated 60-70 outfits for Patrizia alone) and Yates had even more options during the fitting process. “We probably made 25-30 dresses, 20 suits, various shirts, skirts and trousers, half [a] dozen coats, and various long dresses as well,” she says about the options. “Then we’d have the vintage.” Lady Gaga would try on garments for specific scenes and Yates would play her scene partner: “I’d be Paolo [Jared Leto’s character] and she’d be Patrizia, of course. We’d live the scene and she’d say ‘Well, I think I’d need a heavy lip liner, or a dark shadow, or maybe this wig or that wig.’ Because hair and makeup were always there.”

Gucci gave Yates access to their archive, which they allowed to be shipped to Lady Gaga in Los Angeles. The designer notes out of the 15 to 20 outfits, “we tried them all on her, they fit her like an absolute glove. She looked wonderful — I think there was maybe an inch of hem that had to be taken up.” They also had access to pieces from the costume houses in Rome like Annamode and Tirelli. Two ensembles in the movie are archival Gucci: One is the double G shirt paired with a leather skirt, which Yates calls “the sports day outfit,” seen when Domenico De Sole (Jack Huston) serves Patrizia with divorce papers at her daughter’s school. The other is when Patrizia utters the iconic line, “Our name… sweetie,” and is appropriately head-to-toe in Gucci when talking with her husband about the fakes diluting the brand’s reputation. “She’s wearing a double G tunic and flared trousers under her mink,” Yates says about this scene in which Patrizia finds counterfeits being sold on 42nd Street in New York City.

Recreating the Runways

Yates had a fantastic working relationship with Lady Gaga. “She has her own vintage collection, and she was happy to put anything on. She was so collaborative,” the designer says. One look from this private collection did make the cut and the silver Oroton chainmail top and skirt worn by Patrizia to the Versace show are Gaga’s own.

Yates asked House of Gucci associate designer Stefano DeNardis if he would recreate unforgettable runway shows for Versace in 1984 and Tom Ford’s transformative 1995 collection for the production, and “he made everything from scratch.” DeNardis was also tasked with bringing Paolo Gucci’s design dreams to life: “He had to create that from scratch because Paolo never had a collection—he would design shoes, watches, ties, and things like that we were able to find on eBay, etc.,” she explains. “There was never anything really that belonged to him that you could say ‘Oh, that was from the collection.’” DeNardis went with the theme of brown and pastels based on a Paolo quote and “I think he did such a beautiful job. I think it was possibly too beautiful for Paolo Gucci.”

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