Why you should be pay­ing more atten­tion to John Wick’s suits

On the DVD extras for The Social Net­work, there’s a fas­ci­nat­ing clip of Andrew Garfield ago­nis­ing over the type of watch his char­ac­ter would wear. For actors, decid­ing what their char­ac­ter should wear can help to put them in the right frame of mind. For film­mak­ers, it can help tell the shape the sto­ry. When it comes to cre­at­ing mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, then, clothes plays a vital role – and yet for some cos­tume is all about style over function.

Case in point: John Wick. When the first film was released back in 2015, the cos­tumes pro­vid­ed by design­er Luca Mosca were scru­ti­nised pure­ly on an aes­thet­ic lev­el – the tai­lored suits worn by Keanu Reeves’ epony­mous hit­man spo­ken of in terms that would make a GQ writer drool. That’s true enough, but Mosca’s slick, min­i­mal­ist cos­tume design also serves an impor­tant sto­ry­telling function.

Any fran­ti­cal­ly-paced action movie requires a skilled cos­tume design­er. A character’s wardrobe tells us not only what they wear, but also reveals ele­ments of their per­son­al­i­ty, their pro­fes­sion and their place with­in the world of the film. Action movies require us to make quick judg­ments before the bul­lets can start to fly. In 1994’s Leon, Gary Oldman’s Stans­field wears a bag­gy suit with wide lapels to reflect his exces­sive per­son­al­i­ty. Bruce Willis’ John McClane sports a white vest which denotes his every­man sta­tus, while James Bond’s hi-spec tuxe­dos high­light his elite status.

Like Bond, John Wick’s sharp suits are an sig­ni­fi­er of his abil­i­ties. Yet this par­tic­u­lar action movie goes deep­er than most. Wick’s fash­ion sense charts his sto­ry. His char­ac­ter is sewn into the plot. As the sto­ry pro­gress­es, Wick grad­u­ates from pyja­mas to fine­ly tai­lored suits; the first act cul­mi­nates in him dis­patch­ing hench­men in an all-black num­ber. Mosca (who cameos in John Wick: Chap­ter 2 as, rather fit­ting­ly, an Ital­ian tai­lor) and direc­tors Chad Sta­hel­s­ki and David Leitch set up Wick’s moti­va­tion and con­flict using cos­tume. It’s a prime exam­ple of what Amer­i­can film the­o­rist Kristin Thomp­son calls ​“unob­tru­sive craftsmanship”.

The film­mak­ers nor­malise Wick’s vio­lent ten­den­cies by lean­ing on cer­tain stereo­types. In cin­e­ma, the suit is com­mon­ly the uni­form of the white-col­lar work­er. The open­ing scene, in which we see John Wick show­er­ing, tying his tie and putting on a jack­et, there­fore sug­gests that he is just going to work. Only in this world, killing is the norm. The ​“boogey­man” doesn’t go to an office, but he still has his routine.

In John Wick, the all-black suit is a recur­ring motif, a visu­al short­hand that tells us when John is at his most lethal. It first appears as he begins his reen­try into the crim­i­nal under­world, and when he even­tu­al­ly dis­patch­es his chief tar­get, he returns to the com­fort – and nor­mal­i­ty – of his pyja­mas. Only when Adri­anne Palicki’s assas­sin attempts to kill him at the Con­ti­nen­tal do these two worlds col­lide – Wick is forced to fight her in his pyja­mas, and from that point on he knows he will nev­er be able to retire as planned.

Visu­al­ly speak­ing, the cos­tumes in John Wick stitch togeth­er the action sequences togeth­er and add fur­ther con­ti­nu­ity. Yet they also help to clar­i­fy action scenes. In Jaws, when the shark first attacks the busy beach, direc­tor Steven Spiel­berg clar­i­fies the chaos by using clothes as visu­al mark­ers. Spiel­berg empha­sis­es the boy in the red swim trunks and the woman in the striped swim­suit. The char­ac­ters haven’t fea­tured up to this point – they are iden­ti­fied only through their clothes. When the shark attacks, their phys­i­cal appear­ance makes it painful­ly clear what is happening.

Both John Wick and its recent sequel have received praise for the clar­i­ty of their action scenes and this in part is thanks to Mosca’s cos­tume design. In the stand­out night­club sequence from the first movie, the neon light­ing makes a bea­con of Wick’s crisp white shirt, instant­ly draw­ing our atten­tion. Even more cru­cial­ly, he stands out against the many hench­men dressed in red and black shirts. Even when he’s fight­ing in the dark, the film­mak­ers use cos­tume to ensure that the action is easy to follow.

Accord­ing to the V&A, the high­ly spe­cialised field of dance cos­tume design should show the over­all con­cept of the work, empha­sise free­dom of move­ment and aid the chore­og­ra­phy. With the stun­ning bul­let bal­let that is John Wick: Chap­ter 2, Mosca’s immac­u­late designs are again woven into the very fab­ric of the action scenes. Wick pairs gar­ments just as well as he dis­patch­es hench­men with clin­i­cal head shots, and his sar­to­r­i­al ele­gance reveals a great deal about his char­ac­ter. In short, his style has substance.