| Do stylists and image handlers "make" the stars? With celebrity stylists and costume designers, actresses have some powerful allies in creating a memorable profile. But ultimately their roles and their talent are what mold them into leads.
By Greg Reifsteck
("How Films Fashion Our Lives" Part II; Moving Pictures Fashion issue, Aug./Sept. 2005)
Back in film's Golden Era, a young ingénue's journey to lead status was charted out by the studio system. Under contract, a band of suits would set up the right roles for their latest starlet and guide her to the top rung of the celebrity sweepstakes. These days a star is born as much offscreen as onscreen, with an entourage of freelance consultants, not the studios, being the ticket to success. And a crash course in red carpet etiquette is becoming as vital to an actor's or actress' success circa 2005 as acting lessons from Lee Strasberg once were. Let's face it, in the modern motion picture game, most actresses are free agents - but they are the "I" in a team of very important image-makers. The question is: Who is the most valuable player on this idol-making team? In our tabloid-driven society, the first assumption would be that it is her stylist. This miracle worker is the one who turns the girl-next-door into the girl-on-every-magazine-cover. American Royalty In the battle to win the hearts and eyes of ticket-buyers, and especially tabloid page-turners of Middle America, the stylist is the one who provides the invaluable camouflage when scandals erupt and acting roles wane. The truth is, people in the heartland read such gossip rags as Us Weekly (1.4 million total paid circulation) and People (3.6 million) at a ratio of almost 3 or 4 to 1 over entertainment-only magazines such as ours. The exception is the juggernaut Entertainment Weekly (1.7 million total paid circulation), which can open a movie with its star on the cover. So the stylists are the ones at the frontlines to make sure their clients look good every day and every night. They are in charge of an impression made on the ticket buyer long before they park their butt in the Cineplex seat. Whether buying groceries at the market or doing a guest spot on Jay Leno, the paparazzi is ever in pursuit, so an actress must always look her best. "The role of a stylist is a very important one because it's all about marketing, and marketing yourself," says celebrity stylist Ricci DeMartino of the Santa Monica-based Cloutier Agency. "As an actress, it's about your talent, it's about the public and the reception you get from the public, and creating this whole idea of Hollywood and celebrity. "One of the biggest parts of imaging is clothing. And what you wear says a lot about you, your personality and your lifestyle," DeMartino continues. "You look at the clothing and the dresses at the Golden Globes and the Emmys and the Oscars and how it has become a huge business because it's such an integral part of the image of the person that we all aspire to be, and we want to copy what celebrities are doing." Which means that Mrs. Mary Homemaker from Dubuque, Iowa, can tell you every outfit - by color - Jennifer Lopez wore on the cover of Star Magazine during the Bennifer days. But can Mary name even half of the films J. Lo has made since Selena? She really doesn't care. Mary just wants to rush right to the store and buy those dresses from J. Lo's own clothing line. "Actresses are trend-setters. Look toward 7th Avenue and how many have their own line of clothing now, which even five years ago was not the norm," adds DeMartino. The Curtain Opens But even DeMartino admits he's not a complete miracle worker. In order for him to do his job, there must be some talent beneath the flair. "You need to master the craft, and you need to be respected," says DeMartino of the A-List actresses he has styled, including Cameron Diaz, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Reese Witherspoon. "Once you've kind of achieved that, then as a stylist we go on to the way the press perceives you. What is the actress's interaction with the paparazzi and, ultimately, with the consumer that buys the tabloid magazine? I think there needs to be substance there first, and then it's building that next major piece of the puzzle, which is the image of the celebrity." This is where the costume designer and, ultimately, the director come in as image-makers. Their job is to take the actress from the image the stylist has already placed into the public's perception, and turn her into the character she will be playing on film. "I think people are very, very familiar with actors these days, and they think that they know them," says Sophie DeRakoff, a costume designer responsible for Reese Witherspoon's look in all her major hits since Legally Blonde. "They have a lot of images in their brain, because they are bombarded with them every day, of what these people look like when they're not at work. You see them in the beach in a bikini, then you see them getting their nails done, then at a premiere. You have this gamut of how these actresses look in their everyday lives. It's like seeing a neighbor." DeRakoff's effervescent designs have carved out a persona for Witherspoon as a bombshell blonde with a sophisticated edge. Hers is a household name, and she has wisely chosen a series of crowd-pleasing, light-hearted romantic comedies including the Legally Blonde films and Sweet Home Alabama. But Witherspoon and DeRakoff's latest collaboration has been a challenge for both the actress and the designer. The darker-edged Just Like Heaven is a smart move for Witherspoon after last year's period piece Vanity Fair. The deeper and more textured emotions of these last two roles have forced her to expand past her already established bubbly personality. DeRakoff's task was to turn Witherspoon into Dr. Elizabeth Martinson, who ends up in a coma for months, eventually wandering around as a ghost. "Reese basically had one outfit, so it had to be a really good outfit. It's very interesting when you're used to doing 50 outfits on a person and having to hone it down to just one specific look," says DeRakoff. "When I went into the meetings with Mark Waters, the director, he kept referencing the Hitchcock blondes. He had this very particular image in his mind of Reese as kind of a Grace Kelly, a very sophisticated smart blonde woman from the '40s. It wasn't a specific reference to a body, but more a reference to an era."
It's a Scandal No matter how an actress has looked onscreen or off, a scandal is something a stylist or a costume designer cannot cover up. This is where the publicist in the actress' entourage comes in handy - for damage control. Directors, producers and studios also have to deal with the fallout of the questionable off-screen antics of an actress, since these might affect the press coverage and, ultimately, the box-office of their film. For instance, Taylor Hackford had to deal with countless questions about his Proof of Life star Meg Ryan leaving her real-life husband Dennis Quaid for her Proof co-star Russell Crowe. The press frenzy and public scrutiny of the romance helped to destroy the film at the box office. More recently, Lindsay Lohan's very public problems with excessive partying, weight loss and bitter family squabbles made for damage-control hell for family-friendly Disney when it came to marketing their moppet movie Herbie: Fully Loaded. But at the end of the day it is the directors, such as Michael Bay, who has dealt with femme flavors of the month like Liv Tyler in Armageddon and Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbor, who can't worry about the stylists or the publicists. His job is to make sure all of his actresses leave their baggage at the door and make quality acting the essence of their style. "I look at actors as a clean slate," said Bay at a press conference promoting his latest actioner The Island. When asked if up-and-coming ingénue Scarlett Johansson's off-screen persona affects her onscreen performance, Bay said, "She's never been seen in a big movie before, and all I know is when I've screened this movie for the public, because of her performance they go, ‘That girl's a star.'" -MPM Also see "How Films Fashion Our Lives" Part I: Tough Acts to Follow | 
