And usually, you find a piece like that and it’s like, “Oh, there’s no way of using it. It’s such a shame, but it’s been destroyed.” But in that instance, it was like, “No, we can completely use this. He’s lived through a war, everything would be destroyed.”
The gray sweater was [also] from Berlin, from Theaterkunst. An original piece from the time, in immaculate condition, which was incredible. It’s really sculptural, it’s got a softness, but the shape of it is, I’ve never seen a knit like it before—old, vintage, or new. We tried it on Adrien and he loved it. I remember him photographing it incessantly. He was just like, “It’s incredible.” And then when we had the scene in the New York apartment, it just felt so right for that sort of time and the modernity of the life that they’re living in New York, mid-’50s, beatniks, that sort of whole subculture going on around them. And there’s his niece saying, “We’re going to move to Israel.” And it’s like, “Oh, but we are here in this amazing, modern place. Really?” It lends itself really beautifully to that scene, because it does feel incredibly modern.
I’ve had so many emails inquiring about that sweater in particular, and everybody just assumes it was off the peg, a new piece. It’s difficult for people to understand, no, no, this is genuinely from that time. I’m really hoping to do something with that sweater, to reissue it somehow.
People online were also taken by the way László’s workwear was styled, particularly in the scene on the bridge when he’s working in construction. He’s got this nice work jacket on and these low-slung pants.
Yeah. We had great fun—both with Adrien and with the actor who plays Gordon [Isaach de Bankolé] on the construction sites—just finding really beautiful pieces that already had real age to them. So a lot of them were actually earlier, sort of ’40s era, which is probably what they would’ve been wearing because it wouldn’t be brand new, it would be hand-me-downs. Again, it was just really lovely to find original pieces that had a beautiful age to them, and to have a place that they just fit so organically, really.
Courtesy of A24
Another piece that caught my eye was this shiny, grayish, pleather-like raincoat that László wore on the work site for the Van Buren Institute.
There’s a bit of a story behind that rubber coat. It was a Theaterkunst piece, and there were actually quite a few of them, and again I just loved the modernity of it and how utilitarian it is. It’s practical. All the other guys in that scene at the building site, they’ve all got umbrellas because they’ve got their felt hats and gabardine overcoats and these things they can’t get wet. So they’re highly impractical, in a way, certainly in the rain. And just to have him there, no hat, in this rubber kind of mac, just dressed super practically—again, it just felt really true to who he is as a designer.
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