How Khadi­ja Zeg­gaï cre­at­ed the most fash­ion­able film of the year

Ira Sachs is well known for telling messy, hope­less­ly human sto­ries about love, mar­riage, addic­tion, and fam­i­ly. His lat­est, Pas­sages, tells the tale of Tomas (Franz Rogows­ki) and Mar­tin (Ben Whishaw), a gay cou­ple, whose mar­riage is thrown into dis­ar­ray when Tomas meets and falls in love with a school teacher, Agathe (Adele Exchar­poulous). The film has received many a head­line for its explic­it sex scenes, which are plen­ty sexy but also a key plot device to exca­vate through the emo­tion­al rub­ble that the charis­mat­ic Tomas leaves in his wake. But just as impor­tant as the erot­ic in Pas­sages is the use of cos­tumes – to both let the audi­ence under­stand who these char­ac­ters are, how they inter­act with one anoth­er, and what they are say­ing about them­selves through their fab­u­lous peek-a-boo sweaters, sheer red robes, and armour-like leather jackets.

For Sachs, cos­tum­ing in Pas­sages was incred­i­bly impor­tant – so much so that Rogows­ki told him that he had nev­er spent so much time try­ing on clothes in any oth­er film he had pre­vi­ous­ly worked on. ​“My feel­ing at the moment was a mix­ture of pride and shame,” Sachs laughs. ​“Pride that my atten­tion and rig­or were being noticed. The shame was some­how he was point­ing me out as a homo­sex­u­al. [laughs] I felt in that moment very much like George Cukor, you know.” Sachs came into Pas­sages with many a cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ence that he men­tions like San­drine Bon­naire in A Nos Amours, Beware of a Holy Whore by Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder, and Jean Luc-Godard’s Con­tempt with its rich col­or palette. While Sachs had his own ideas going into the film, work­ing with cos­tume design­er, Khadi­ja Zeg­gaï helped to bring the work to anoth­er lev­el as he describes. ​“She’s this won­der­ful com­bi­na­tion of extra­or­di­nar­i­ly warm and kind, and also very, very sharp. She’s got her eye on the prize in a way which ele­vates the work of the rest of us.”

Zeg­gaï had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Sachs on his 2019 film, Frankie, dress­ing the leg­endary Isabelle Hup­pert. Hav­ing already estab­lished that rela­tion­ship with Sachs and get­ting along well on that set, led Zeg­gaï to col­lab­o­rate with him again on Pas­sages. She tells Lit­tle White Lies about col­lab­o­rat­ing with Sachs, that now infa­mous mesh crop top, and dress­ing three of the world’s sex­i­est actors.

How was it work­ing with Ira again on Pas­sages and that col­lab­o­ra­tion process?

It’s very free and very cre­ative work. Ira is always search­ing for the char­ac­ters in his films over an extend­ed peri­od of time. We prepped a lot for this film, espe­cial­ly for the three main char­ac­ters. He’s a very cul­tured man, so it’s real­ly enrich­ing to work with him because he brings his entire mem­o­ry. He’s search­ing his mem­o­ry for things that we could use to enrich the char­ac­ters. It’s real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to work with him and things are chang­ing all the time. And I was ask­ing him to give me a max­i­mum of infor­ma­tion about what he want­ed, and he was very gen­er­ous with that.

After you read the script, what were your ini­tial thoughts and inspi­ra­tions for the characters?

As soon as I read the screen­play, Ira and I were imme­di­ate­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing. He want­ed to know what I thought of the screen­play and had his own ideas of what each char­ac­ter should look like. What I told him is that, for me, this screen­play was a sto­ry of great free­dom. And in fact, that free­dom is like Ira him­self. There’s some­thing in the screen­play that I applied to myself in an enor­mous way. And of course, the three actors are very dif­fer­ent peo­ple, but they’re three sexy, beau­ti­ful young peo­ple. So it was very easy to imag­ine how they might look and Ira was con­stant­ly giv­ing me addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and sup­port for that.

What was the process cre­at­ing the aes­thet­ic for Tomas? His cloth­ing almost feels like he’s using it as a weapon for what he wants from peo­ple, whether that’s Mar­tin or Agathe. And obvi­ous­ly need to know every­thing about the crop top that he wears to seduce Mar­tin and then meets Agathe’s par­ents in.

Tomas is played by Franz [Rogows­ki] who has a very strong per­son­al­i­ty. As soon as I read the screen­play, I saw Tomas with this, this ani­mal skin on him [laughs], a fur coat, some­thing that was arro­gant but dis­creet. I imme­di­ate­ly thought of this fur piece for him. And so that’s some­thing that I found right away.

The crop top was ini­tial­ly planned to be an under­gar­ment since Tomas is some­one who gets naked quite a bit. [laughs] And since he wears see-through sweaters, I assume that we would see the crop top through a sweater. But then one day Ira said, ​‘Let’s just have the crop top with no sweater.’ And I said to him, ​‘Are you sure? Isn’t that a lit­tle dar­ing?’ And Franz imme­di­ate­ly adopt­ed it as a cos­tume. It’s an unex­pect­ed one, but it’s a choice that Ira made to see that crop top in those two scenes.

When you read the screen­play and want­ed this almost like an ani­mal motif for Tomas, did that blend into his use of pat­tern? Espe­cial­ly when we see the crop top, he’s wear­ing those low-slung leop­ard print pants and there’s the scene where you just see him in the snake print leather jacket.

The idea from the start was that we would see the character’s skin as much as pos­si­ble. That we would see all these actors in the sex­i­est, most seduc­tive way pos­si­ble. And then we have Tomas’s bear fur jack­et. We have the snake jack­et, the see-through sweaters, the holes in the sweaters. All Tomas’s clothes were cho­sen start­ing with that bear fur. Tomas was the only one who I imag­ine wear­ing such eccen­tric cos­tumes of the three characters.

Mar­tin is obvi­ous­ly the oppo­site of Tomas. You know, he’s more laid back. He’s always wear­ing the three-but­ton Hen­leys. He has that beau­ti­ful pat­terned art jack­et that he wears to work. There’s a cozi­ness and a sta­bil­i­ty about him. And then his red robe, which I think is one of the sex­i­est things I’ve ever seen on film, and espe­cial­ly on Ben Whishaw.

Ira want­ed Mar­tin to be exact­ly as you under­stood him to be – the oppo­site of Tomas. He’s an artist, but he’s a mod­est artist. There’s some­thing a lit­tle bit held back about him. Ira want­ed each char­ac­ter, one after the oth­er, to wear a red gar­ment. The red gar­ment shows when they’re strong. So Mar­tin, when he’s with his lover, he’s strong. We need to show that he’s sta­ble. And at the end of the film, Agathe is wear­ing a red sweater. She’s cho­sen for her life, she’s decid­ed what to do. Ira chose each col­or, which was quite fas­ci­nat­ing work to be involved in.

As for Martin’s dress­ing gown, it does look sexy, but it’s sim­ple. It’s a woman’s bathrobe. It’s sexy because it’s cash­mere. It has a way of hang­ing down. It moves a lit­tle bit. These are gar­ments that cir­cu­late through the film. It’s very sexy because it’s a lit­tle trans­par­ent and Ben wears it marvelously.

There’s a lot of play with gen­der through the cos­tume. Was that some­thing you and Ira dis­cussed when dress­ing the characters?

Ira didn’t want to dif­fer­en­ti­ate for this film. So for instance, Ben wears women’s clothes in the film, but so does Franz. The crop top is a women’s gar­ment, so are the leop­ard print pants, and the green sweater is uni­sex. So there’s lots of things in this film that are male-female. There’s real­ly no lim­its in this film or no boundaries.

Speak­ing to that, dress­ing Agathe, she’s obvi­ous­ly so sexy and then you find out she’s a teacher. Was she pur­pose­ly dressed to be this seduc­tion foil to Mar­tin in some respects?

She’s a very seduc­tive char­ac­ter and Ira real­ly told me a lot about her. He real­ly direct­ed me for dress­ing Agathe. She’s both a very pop­u­lar per­son in the sense of work­ing-class or of the peo­ple. She’s very acces­si­ble. But she’s also very sexy. Adele [Exar­chopou­los] her­self is of course very sexy if you see her in real life. She’s not a per­son who needs beau­ti­ful clothes
She wears them very well. She’s beau­ti­ful, she’s young, she’s sexy, and she also wears things with a kind of simplicity.

So for instance, the red jack­et that she has is a vin­tage piece from the eight­ies. And I thought that we need­ed some­thing that would pro­tect her which is why that’s leather. We also chose rather sim­ple under­wear for her, sexy red, but sim­ple. And her shoes also are not very fan­cy women’s shoes. The char­ac­ter is a mod­est per­son of mod­est back­ground, you know, but I think that one can feel that in the way that she’s dressed.

Were there any spe­cif­ic design­ers that you used for the cloth­ing in the film?

There’s a lot of clothes in the film from a stock of clothes that I have. When I encounter a piece of cloth­ing that I like, I keep it to use for a film some­day. There’s some vin­tage Ken­zo, there’s some Acne, and Agnes B loaned us clothes for Tomas and Mar­tin. It’s more Ben who wears the Agnes B. And then there’s a lot of sec­ond­hand, not very expen­sive clothes, vin­tage stuff. As for the crop top, I found it in a very afford­able bou­tique in Paris. And I think it caught some­thing like 15 euros. When I saw it, I thought to myself, I think this could be some­thing good.

There’s so much inter­est­ing mono­chrome dress­ing, such as Tomas in all red on the red couch. At the end of the film, Mar­tin in that beau­ti­ful white when he’s cook­ing. How was it envi­sion­ing and doing the mono­chrome dress­ing for the film?

Regard­ing Mar­tin, it was Ira who want­ed at the end of the film to have Mar­tin in white to sig­ni­fy some­thing. He want­ed some­thing very light, very clear. And sim­i­lar­ly for Tomas, on the couch, the sweat­shirt is some­thing from my clos­et that I had. And those striped pants are kind of like clown pants. [laughs] It’s a very pecu­liar scene because Tomas starts to cry. He’s real­ly suf­fer­ing and it was Ira who want­ed him to be dressed like that.