‘The Gentlemen’ Just Invented ‘Cock Couture’

“The Gentlemen” is a Guy Ritchie project — of course, style is substance. And nowhere is that more powerful than in the clothes worn by the Horniman family.

Set in the same world as Ritchie’s 2019 film of the same name, the Netflix series places Theo James’ Eddie Horniman — newly minted as a duke and the surprising heir to his father’s estate — in the midst of tense negotiations with a slew of increasingly baffling questionable characters. (A shootout in an upper-class neighbor’s secret vault is a series highlight.) Disconcerted to find out that his father allowed a marijuana farm to flourish on their property under the watchful eye of Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), Eddie initially tries to extricate himself from the agreement before circumstances (and his older brother, Freddy) force him to engage in the admittedly ungentlemanly life of a gangster. And through it all, the Hornimans remain iconoclastically stylish.

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“I had an absolutely wonderful time on the job. It’s an absolutely brilliant show, and I hope everybody enjoyed watching it as much as I did making it with Guy,” costume designer LouLou Bontemps told IndieWire. She was responsible not just for Susie’s jaw-dropping looks but for the careful riffs on the gangsters Eddie and Susie encounter over the course of the eight episodes comprising “The Gentlemen” season. And while the title of the show naturally invoked certain looks, from Harry Goodwins’ muscled boxer to Giancarlo Esposito’s suave American, it’s the careful storytelling embedded in the costumes worn by the Horniman family and Susie that is particularly compelling.

But it’s the bespoke chicken suit that Bontemps created for the riveting climax of the first episode that proves what happens when designers are given the space to do their jobs. “When I read it in the script, I thought, ‘Ah, chicken costume sounds a bit dull,'” Bontemps said. But as Susie Glass herself might say, it all comes down to execution.

Read on to find out more style secrets from “The Gentlemen,” including Bontemps’ favorite look for Susie, the limb she went out on for that chicken suit, and more.

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