ten looks inspired by bella baxter
ten looks inspired by bella baxter
as told through her stages of self-actualization
Poor Things has been described as a “Feminist Frankenstein” and a “Bizarro Barbie.” Plot aside (which will be 100% spoiled if you read this post), this movie has stunning costumes. Every time Bella Baxter came onscreen in a new outfit I was squealing. The way I RAN to my computer after getting home and immediately starting googling “leg of mutton sleeves” and “chartreuse silk skirt.”
For a movie with such fabulous fashion, I haven’t seen very much internet fervor about it. There hasn’t been a Bella Baxter-core in the same way there was the loud and inescapable Barbie-core. My hypothesis is that the fashion in Poor Things is LESS commercially marketable and MORE slow fashion friendly because of the painstaking effort required to curate items spanning multiple time periods. Bella’s style is mashup of everything from Victorian steampunk pieces to 60s space age boots to haute couture ruffle dresses. That’s not easy to source! The silver lining is, I hope it doesn’t get the fast fashion treatment the way Barbie did.
Ok, let’s dive in! Lots of secondhand pieces (but some new) linked.
The first scenes of Bella portray how she’s an infant in a grown woman’s body. She skips and twirls chaotically around the mansion, babbles her words and drops her prepositions. I loved her lobster tail skirt, it’s giving mermaid vibes which matches the whole nautical exploration theme in the set design. And it’s a nod to the chimera pets she grew up with…every being in her world has been stitched up from separate beings.
How to get the look:
smocked and quilted fabrics
plain whites and neutrals
childlike, fanciful shapes that are easy to move in
Bella has a nanny who dresses her. This emphasizes her “infant”/”child” identity, as she requires a caretaker. She walks barefoot, her hair is worn in one long braid.
How to get the look:
big, floofy shapes—fabrics do not cling to the skin
glorified pajamas
anything that looks like a duvet
A turning point in Bella’s development is her insistence in going outside. She becomes aware that she lives a very confined life. Dr. Godwin reluctantly brings her to a picnic in their steampunk horse-head carriage. Chaos ensues and she asserts her will. We see this shift in her character: she has desires and exercises power in the ways she can to get what she wants.
In her first “outside” outfit she is a bit more dressed up to reflect Victorian society standards.
How to get the look:
Big sleeves, obviously
Gothic romantic
Structured lace-up wench boots
Bella pulls off her great escape. She leaves her betrothed to join a rakish, corny lawyer—Duncan Wedderburn—on a adventure to Lisbon. Bella discovers a lot of things for the first time: sex, egg tarts, alcohol, the ways of the world. This is the first outfit where she dresses herself. The ruffle blouse and jacket makes her fully dressed on the top, but the bottom is the Victorian equivalent of going out in underwear (Miu Miu girl!).
How to get the look:
Prim and proper blouse/jacket
Barely-there skirt or bloomers
Try a baby blue and chartreuse color combo, I think this is such an iconic moment in the movie where the colors really matter
After traipsing around in Lisbon, Bella starts wanting to explore more on her own and Duncan does not like this bc he is threatened by her independence. So he essentially kidnaps her and brings her on a fancy steamboat cruise that oozes green pollution fumes into the technicolor sky. At this point, everything in the film darkens. It gets moodier. The pastels give way to muddy bruise-like tones, a subtle hint at aging and mortality. Bella spends most of her time on the ship making new friends and trying to cleave away from a clingy Duncan. We also get the best dance scene since Wednesday.
How to get the look:
Peachy/terracotta color
Silk taffeta
Tiered ruffles
Floor length silhouettes
Bella meets a friend on the ship who takes her on a detour to Alexandria. There, she sees immense suffering and poverty. Whatever bubble of innocence she maintained pops. She reacts by taking all of Duncan’s money and trying to give it to the people of Alexandria, illustrating her naïveté as she starts processing the dark truths of the world. Bella wears an all-white ensemble during this existential crisis—I think it’s the last time she wears white before her wedding—perhaps to illustrate a finality to her innocence.
How to get the look:
all-white monochromatic
big sleeves and ruffles with pulled in waist
eyes that have seen things
Next stop: Paris. Bella needs money and becomes a sex worker at a brothel, despite Duncan’s insistence that “whoring” herself is “the worst thing” she can do. Bella ditches him and builds her own life around sexual liberation and self education. The costume designer talked about the brothel outfits in an interview:
Often the cuts of these blouses: they have a lot of pleats in the centre front and then they have these big folded areas to me that felt very vagina-like, like Georgia O’Keefe paintings. Very sexual and bodily.
How to get the look:
lingerie as clothes
sheer blouses
slip skirts and dresses
“We are our own means of production,” Bella declares, on her way to a socialists meeting. It’s winter in Paris and she’s busy attending medical school and tending to her burgeoning political consciousness. Her outfit here is much more formal and masculine, as she tries to join a male-dominated professional field.
How to get the look:
dark academia
wool capes and coats
long socks and boots
black, gray and navy
Bella visits Dr. Godwin on his deathbed and learns the truth of her existence: her dead body was reanimated with the brain of her fetus (!). She makes peace with all this and the movie ends with her becoming a doctor, inheriting Dr. Godwin’s estate and living it up with her friends/lovers. Her clothes are more relaxed and matured, marking her growth into womanhood.
How to get the look:
Luxurious knitwear
Silk pants
Comfort!
What was your favorite Bella Baxter outfit?
your movie breakdown posts are my absolute favorite -- i love your analyses of how the costumes reflect and support the characters and plot. please keep doing them!!
i love this! i just saw the movie and am a little bit obsessed, especially with the costumes -- would definitely recommend the costume designer (Holly Waddington)'s interviews about the costume process