9/100: Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Angel wings, hand-painted shirts, and such sweet sorrow
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Costumes by: Kym Barrett
Directed by: Baz Luhrmann
This movie may be for you if: you love costume parties, you have a flair for the dramatic, and you’ve ever smoked a cigarette on the beach with your shoes and socks on.
Where to watch: available on Hulu, and included in Disney+ premium subscription
For Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 interpretation of Shakespeare, the director brought on fellow grad of Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art, Kym Barrett.
Romeo + Juliet was Barrett’s first official film credit, kicking off a 29 year (and counting!) career in Hollywood. Her work on Romeo + Juliet was widely celebrated, leading her to numerous future collaborations - keep an eye out for her re-appearance in the 100 Fashion Films Project. Barrett’s design skills have taken her beyond the silver screen, with wide-ranging credits that include costumes for Cirque du Soleil, the Metropolitan Opera, and the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Barrett had previously worked with Luhrmann and art director Catherine Martin as a wardrobe assistant on their 1992 movie Strictly Ballroom. The project was the first entry in what would become their Red Curtain Trilogy, followed by Romeo + Juliet and concluded with Moulin Rouge! While their retelling of Shakespeare’s classic was one of many times The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was adapted for screens (most notably in 1936 and 1968), it’s widely considered one of the most influential film adaptations of his work.
“It was definitely the job you want to have been your first job,” Barrett told Vogue in a 2021 interview. “It was unforgettable.”
Romeo + Juliet noteably retained the play’s original Shakespearean dialogue, pairing Early Modern English with contemporary music and fashion, all against the backdrop of the gritty invented Verona Beach.
“For me, the created world came down to the fact that Shakespeare's plays were always a bit of a pastiche,” noted Martin in the film’s production notes. “They were never one pure period. He never went to Verona and studied in detail the workings of Verona society.” Much as Shakespeare himself conjured a fantasy of Italy, the 1996 Romeo + Juliet invented a beachfront world that included gas station shootouts, video surveillance, and Radiohead.
The weaponry of the original story was replaced with guns, stylized to match the colorful costumes and emblazoned with tongue-in-cheek names like Dagger and Sword.
While most of the movie wardrobe was made from scratch, a few major fashion houses stepped in to offer a hand to the world of Romeo + Juliet. The project was working on a tight budget, so Barrett tapped connections from past photoshoots for help. Miuccia Prada designed Romeo’s custom blue suit for the wedding scene, YSL outfitted the elder Capulets, and Dolce & Gabbana gave the production boxes full of old stock.
“Being Australian, we weren’t really in the fashion world yet,” Barrett said in a 2021 interview with Nylon. “But everywhere we went, people helped us, so it was a pretty cool moment in time.”
The warring Montagues and Capulets were set apart through starkly contrasting stylization. Romeo’s crew wore relaxed, colorful attire, inspired by the kitsch of beachfront cityscapes. “I wanted them to feel like Miami Beach,” Barrett told Nylon. “Like they probably surfed, they went to the beach, they wore Hawaiian shirts, they maybe could have gone into the military.”
The Montagues accessorized with dog tags, chunky rings, and distinct hairstyles. With the exception of one Hawaiian shirt worn by DiCaprio, all of the other colorful prints were hand painted by the costume team. Like the rest of the film, the shirt designs were imbued with religious imagery and symbols with ominous foreshadowing.
One of the most prolific symbols used in the film was the cross, doubly a religiously reference as it was a nod to the film’s titular “star-cross’d lovers.” One was even hidden in the title of the movie, which opted for a “+” symbol instead of “&” or “and” like in Shakespeare’s original naming.
On Juliet’s side, the Capulet uniform was a sleek, Western-inspired look of leather, quilted vests, and lots of silver hardware. Their vests (and matching guns) were hand-painted, like the Montague’s shirts, often including similar religious themes but in their contrasting signature style. Instead of bleached cuts and baby smooth faces, the Capulet men sported slicked back hair and sculpted beards.
For the background characters of Verona Beach? Italian designer, of course.
“[Dolce & Gabbana] came from the showroom with these big boxes of stuff, so the extras fittings were amazingly fun. Everybody loved it,” Barrett told Vogue. “We were able to bastardize some things—we chopped the sleeves off, or we overdyed them to age them, or threw dirt on them.”
What wasn’t hacked up D&G was designed and made by a network of artisans, many of them local to the Mexico City set location. The incredibly detailed craftsmanship seen in Romeo + Juliet went beyond just clothing, including the work of glove makers, milliners, and shoemakers.
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