"She's just trying to find a real life among the sequins," explained Tilda Swinton of Marianne Lane, the recuperating rock-star she plays in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash. The costumes created for the film were designed by Raf Simons during his tenure at Dior, and tell a nuanced tale of subversion and transformation – as Guadagnino revealed, "When people think fashion is just the surface of things, I disagree, very politely." Simons' designs for the film are a mutation on 50s styles – specifically, Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini's Journey to Italy, and explore the strange contrast between Lane's pre-Pantelleria life as a Bowie-esque punk icon and her new, recovering persona – as Dakota Johnson's character quips, she's "domestic for a rock star." In honour of the exquisite attention to detail throughout the costume and props of the newly-released thriller that served as the framework for AnOther Magazine's A/W15 trans-media narratives (Swinton appeared on the cover in character, accompanied by an interview conducted as Marianne Lane), we sent photographer Giulio Ghirardi to capture the pieces in-situ, in a storage facility in Crema, a city just outside of Milan.
"I portrayed the objects in a very different place from the island of Pantelleria," Ghirardi explained, "so that they would be released from any reference to the atmosphere of the movie, and could have their own life. I deliberately didn't want to see the trailer or film beforehand, thinking it might be a conditioning factor. But, after shooting the props, I expected a certain characterisation of Marianne Lane – and so it was." The glittering trousers of a gold, sequinned bodysuit; a record player awaiting a vinyl expectantly; a Rolling Stones T-shirt slung over a chair; each image speaks to a different element of the film itself but, in a twist on behind-the-scenes documentary, re-contextualises some of its most recognisable objects for yet another layer of the meta-narratives surrounding the film.
