"Everything Everywhere All at Once" triumphed last night at the 95th Academy Awards ceremony.
The most Oscar-nominated film of the year, this anarchic and absurdist multiverse-themed comedy-drama directed by The Daniels - Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert - won seven awards: Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay; Best Actress went to Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, Best Supporting Actor to Ke Huy Quan as her husband Waymond Wang, and Best Supporting Actress to Jamie Lee Curtis as IRS Inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre.
The film marks quite a few records: unrecognised by the Academy, veteran actor and Malaysian screen legend (she previously appeared in "Tomorrow Never Dies" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" just to mention a couple of the films she featured in throughout her career), Michelle Yeoh has become the second woman of colour to win the best actress Oscar after Halle Berry back in 2002.
Ke Huy Quan is instead the first Vietnam-born actor to win an Oscar, while Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, are only the third duo ever to win the Oscar for best director. This edition of the Academy Awards was the first time multiple Asian actors won Oscars in the same year.
The film, for those who haven't seen it yet, is the story of Evelyn, a Chinese American woman trapped in a world of laundry and taxes.
While dealing with an IRS audit and as her marriage is imploding and the relationship with her daughter is becoming more volatile under irreconcilable differences, Evelyn is plunged into universal chaos.
The plot soon turns into a sci-fi adventure and Evelyn becomes an unlikely yet powerful anti-heroine, the only person who can restore a balance in her fractured life and in the messed-up multiverse, thanks to an interdimensional fight.
In this infinite number of alternative possibilities and with a narrative out of this world, the film still tackles down-to-earth preoccupations, in particular identity and a complex mother-daughter relationship that will feel familiar to many, especially children of immigrant parents. Yet, there's hope at the very end and a final optimistic message, remarkable in our dark times.
"Everything Everywhere All at Once" didn't get the Best Costume award that went to Ruth E Carter who gave an Afrofuturist twist to the superhero costumes in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever".
Carter also set a record: she is the first Black woman to win two Academy Awards; she won her first Oscar in 2019 for "Black Panther", then becoming the first Black person to win the costume design category.
Competition was high in the costume category that also included Mary Zophres for "Babylon," Catherine Martin for "Elvis," and Jenny Bevan for "Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris".
Though "Everything Everywhere All at Once" didn't win the costume category, let's have a look at it, as there is a lot to dissect in Shirley Kurata's costumes that at times combine film with fashion.
The career of Los Angeles-based Shirley Kurata is divided between film and fashion: she developed campaigns for brands (she collaborated with Miu Miu, Melissa, Vans, Volkswagen and Clinique, among the others), contributed her style to music videos and performances (A$AP Rocky, Bleachers, the Linda Lindas, Jenny Lewis, Tierra Whack and Billie Eilish) and has been a collaborator of Rodarte's Kate and Laura Mulleavy since they first launched their label (she also worked with Opening Ceremony's Humberto Leon and Carol Lim).
Bespectacled like Edith Head whom she admires, Kurata is also a retailer, co-owner of Virgil Normal in East Hollywood, a boutique stocking up-and-coming labels.
At the end of February this year, Kurata won an award for excellence in sci-fi film at the 25th Costume Designers Guild, and, at yesterday's Oscar Kurata styled the performance for the film's "This Is A Life" performed by David Byrne, Stephanie Hsu, and trio Son Lux.
As "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is a mix and mesh of different universes, going from a tax universe to a very whacked hot-dog fingers universe and a movie-star universe, Kurata faced a great challenge as she had to dress up the film characters within each different world.
Anti-heroine Michelle Yeoh wears very ordinary clothes - a floral shirt and a red quilted vest - when we first meet her and in her most dynamic action scenes, when she fights against a universe gone bonkers.
Kurata is from a Japanese American family but grew up in California, where her parents owned a laundromat and it was her own mum's look and fleece vest that inspired Evelyn's functional clothes.
Evelyn's husband is also dressed in a very ordinary way, but one accessory, a fanny pack with a dangling plush pig keychain, becomes an essential prop in his costume when Alpha Waymond from another dimension, borrows his body to explain Evelyn what's going on, and uses the accessory as a weapon.
Inspirations for the costumes came from a Pinterest page that the directors gave Kurata, but, given the limited budget, the costume designer had to find affordable solutions to create a credible wardrobe for the film characters.
Quite a few garments for Evelyn and Raymond came from Los Angeles' Chinatown, including the burnt red "Punk" cardigan with decorative motifs around the sleeves (replicated on the sleeves of Daniel Kwan's evening jacket at the Oscars View this photo) that Evelyn wears at the laundromat during their Chinese New Year's party.
The garment with its slogan is in the style of those designs characterised by casual words you may find in cheap markets, but perfectly fits the scene as Evelyn, who is supposed to behave like a responsible entrepreneur, smashes instead the window of her laundromat and gets arrested by the police.
Evelyn jumps across different multiverses, embodying all the possibilities she could have lived, so we see her as a successful Hong Kong martial arts film star at the premiere of her new movie in a voluminous Haute Couture gown in a dimension characterized by a Wong Kar-wai palette; but she is also a chef living a "Ratatouille" remake (albeit with a raccoon rather than a rat...), a human pizza billboard and a judge.
Jamie Lee Curtis stars as the hilarious tax-auditor and fighter Deirdre Beaubeirdre. Her mustard ensemble is formal enough for an office environment, but practical and relaxed: it doesn't constrict her body and allows her to eat Waymond's biscuits without worrying about her waistline, while her necklace features a useful ring for her glasses and shows a no-nonsense approach to jewelry.
Deirdre's clothes also allow her to perform incredible stunts: she appears in various other universes. In one of the most memorable dimensions, all the characters have hot dog fingers and her mustard turtleneck, yellow cardigan, gold chains and red eyeglasses are discarded in favour of an all beige look.
Fashion-wise, it’s Stephanie Hsu as Evelyn's disaffected daughter Joy who gets to wear the most fashionable and inventive designs.
At the beginning of the film, Joy Wang is dressed in a grunge style that mirrors her mood, but things get more hectic as the film progresses.
Joy doubles up as intergalactic villain Jobu Tupaki, a character with a flair for fashion that allows her to acquire a wardrobe worthy of a multi-layered universe. Jobu threatens to suck all of reality into the "everything bagel", a sort of black-hole of a giant bagel.
Quite often Jobu switches looks at the flick of an eye: appearing in a white embroidered bedazzled jumpsuit à la Elvis Presley with an oversized belt, accessorised with a pink wig that matches with the pig on her leash, she suddenly changes into a silver star studded wrestling suit matched with a pale blue faux fur coat that then turns into a golfer's uniform with pink polo, argyle vest, pleated skirt, visor, and golf glove.
But there's more to see, from a neon green feathered number that she wears when she attacks the Alpha crew, to a black Cosplayer costume complete with massive rifle and a vintage Adidas Originals x Jeremy Scott Fall 2012 teddy bear hoodie in a psychedelic colour scheme (View this photo; a look inspired by an image of a teddy bear coat by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac that was on one of Pinterest boards supplied by The Daniels).
In the final duel Jobu's multiverse skipping look is a Comme des Garçons-inspired tartan collage jumpsuit complete with a purple silk bow and black wig.
This combination of different costumes and her makeup that looks like a crossover between Picasso's "Weeping Woman" and Alex in "A Clockwork Orange", represents "Everything Everywhere Jobu", a multi-splintered and recombined Jobu who is cracking up.
Some of these costumes show a connection with Kurata's work as a stylist for music videos: the white vinyl dress with long gloves and shoulder armour completed by an Elizabethan cartwheel ruffle, pearly collar and belt pieces and a braided bagel hairpiece that Jobu dons when she shows Evelyn the "everything bagel" has some links with Tierra Whack's Elizabethan red vinyl costume in the video for her track "Stand Up" (View this photo).
We see some of these costumes (like the acid green feathery number or Jobu's Kung Fu costume) only for a few instants as the camera jumps from one universe to another, but Kurata paid attention to the tiniest details in the looks.
Undoubtedly, the success of the film will stretch to Halloween costumes (will Heidi Klum adopt the Jobu persona come October?) and maybe generate some fashion trends.
But that the film already entered the cult status was proved by the auction of costumes and props held at the beginning of March on the site of A24, the film's production house. Most items were sold for remarkable sums of money (bids for Evelyn's floral shirt and padded vest reached $14,000; Waymond's fanny pack was sold for $48,000), that were divided between the Transgender Law Center, the Asian Mental Health Project and the Laundry Workers Center.
Will the film inspire a line of clothes or maybe a capsule collection by Kurata in collaboration with a famous fashion house? Maybe, after all in the past Milena Canonero's designs for "Chariots of Fire" prompted Ralph Lauren and Jeffrey Banks to launch collections inspired by the characters' attires in the film, and, after the film came out, Canonero herself was asked to design a collection (that won her the Coty Award) for menswear manufacturer Norman Hilton.
In the meantime, the triumph of the film at the Oscars reminds us success comes at any age: "Ladies, don't ever let anyone tell you are past your prime," Yeoh stated in her Oscar acceptance speech.
Maybe, also thanks to Evelyn, multiverses are realigning in favour of the unlikely heroes and heroines, the divergent minds and the underdogs. It was about time.
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