Marylin Fitoussi, costume designer for the “Bardot” series: “Bardot had very few clothes and she recycled a lot”

Before flying to the United States to talk about “Emily in Paris”, whose extravagant looks she signs, costume designer Marylin Fitoussi took the time to tell us about her latest mission: to recreate the Brigitte Bardot dress.

For the “Bardot” series, by Danièle and Christopher Thompson, the costume designer did her best to reinvent the 1950s with shark-collar shirts, capri pants and pairs of Repetto. Encounter.

Before working on this series, what was your relationship to the Bardot myth?

I was delighted to approach it without any a priori since we are talking about the youth of Bardot, from 1949 to 1960, it is the birth of the myth. Me, I was born at the end of the 1960s, so she was not unknown to me. I can’t say that I was a fan of it and it was by looking into it a little more that I discovered it. In the imagination of people of my generation, Bardot is the thigh-high boots and Serge Gainsbourg, or else the black wig in “Contempt” by Godard or the mambo in “And God…created woman” by Roger Vadim. She is completely linked to a collective universe, so I was interested in creating a new vision of Bardot, and above all in getting to know her better.

How did you research the costumes?

We are lucky because Bardot was the most photographed woman in the world, so the database is very easy to do. I have a Pinterest board with 1,400 photos and I haven’t used it all for the series. Even if she stopped her career in 1973, at 39 years old, since she was 15 until that age, there are a lot of things. His life also traces times when fashion really changed, the pivotal periods between the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

What is the Bardot look?

The silhouette of Bardot for many people is summed up by this inimitable wasp waist. And since she was a dancer, she created her own fashion with her tops that looked like leotards that she wore very low-cut on the shoulders, a headband and ballet flats. The Repetto brand has also created for her the ballerina we know today. To reproduce this look, it was a work of sourcing to find clothes that are the closest, and that we can look at his silhouette without his costumes being carbon copies.

You like to use second-hand clothes, I imagine that you were able to have fun on this series?

Yes, I had a blast, that’s why it’s great to do back in the day. From 1900 you can work with authentic clothes and there is nothing more magnificent than the patina of time. The only problem is that the morphologies have evolved. In the 1950s, the standard size for women was between 1.55 m and 1.60 m and the standard shoe size was 36 or 37. Now women are 1.70 m with a shoe size between 38 and 39. This is because we no longer have waist cinchers, we no longer have corsets, the body is liberated, the food is packed with vitamins and the feet are no longer constrained. Period shoes are more and more importable because the foot is wider and wider, there are lots of elements that we couldn’t use because the morphology has changed.

Is the clothing as important as the script?

The garment is a character in its own right! But on period series, he’s nothing without the proper make-up and hairstyle. The silhouette without a bun or sauerkraut is less telling. Even more than on a contemporary series, it’s teamwork because you have to find the right proportions, like the accuracy of a line of eyeliner, the right color of lipstick… These are specific things of the moment and it is very important to find these details.

Did the actors help you find these details?

You have to know how to walk in heels. It was very cute because Julia (by Nunez, interpreter of Bardot in the series, Editor’s note) is a modern young woman who wears jeans, oversized jackets and rides her scooter in tennis shoes. So, being constrained with a waist cincher, a suit and heels, you have to do it. And she had that intelligence to say “I need to learn to walk”because we did not walk in 1960 as we walk today in the street.

There are two very identified characters in the style: Bardot’s mother with that scarlet lipstick and the manager Olga Ortiz Primus who constantly wears her pearl necklace.

They are classics of the time. At the time, all the women were flirtatious: they had their nails painted, wore curlers in the evening, made up… And the pearl necklace was something that was passed down from mother to daughter. It was part of the heritage, the inheritance that you get from your mother who herself inherits it from your grandmother.

Do you find that we have lost in coquetry today?

We have another sense of fashion, but I find that we don’t dress anymore, all generations combined. I find that there is a standardization of taste. It’s a kind of globalization, we have the same stores that sell the same things from Paris to Mexico City, except for a few designers with a very marked DNA. When I look in the subway who does not wear jeans, whether men or women, it is very little.

In the series, coquetry was in order?

When we shot Bardot, the actors who are young, between 20 and 25, were all fascinated to see themselves dressed. Some had never put on a costume in their life and they thought they were very beautiful, it was really touching for me to see this kind of birth. I remember, César Chouraqui, to whom the 1950 look suits divinely, said he wanted to dress like that every day.

But Brigitte Bardot, she was very simple. How did she become iconic?

It is precisely because she took the opposite view. The early Bardot is surprisingly simple. Which touched me, because there is already this part of activism in her, a medallion she wore when she was 15, we find it in her wardrobe at 26. A shawl, the same, her little buttoned vests too, she wore them one way then turned them the other way. She had very few clothes and she recycled a lot. In her interviews she said “I’m a very simple woman, and that’s why women identify with me”. She didn’t go to Dior, not to Hermès, she didn’t have a handbag. She was dressed by fashion designers only for appearances at Cannes, it’s not like now where each brand has a muse. Bardot was a white t-shirt, jeans or striped capri pants, barefoot, with tied hair…

This is what has made its trademark and inspired generations of women. Can we consider that she was a fashion influencer before her time?

Completely, and on all levels: it has fascinated the whole world. She had her haters, her fans, people who made theories, deciphered what she was wearing… It was from Bardot that we got that and I’m not sure there was since other phenomena as strong as it has been.

« Bardot », Monday May 8 at 9:10 p.m. on France 2. Series by Danièle and Christopher Thompson (2023). With Julia de Nunez, Hippolyte Girardot, Géraldine Pailhas. 6×52 mins. (Available in replay on france.tv).