“I had to analyze Arthur’s character. Where does he get his clothes? Would he care how he looked? Would he dress like a little boy?” Because he was sharing an apartment with his mother, Penny, who calls him “my little boy,” the two-time Academy Award-winning costume designer for ‘Joker’, Mark Bridges, dressed Fleck in a hooded jacket that was too small and “vaguely juvenile” along with his signature white socks. “I never use white socks in a film, but if ever there was a time, it would be for Arthur Fleck! […] There’s something kind of awkward and adolescent in his clothing. He’s probably had his sweaters and shirts for years, and, when he does his laundry, he puts it all in with his mom’s laundry. He lives hand to mouth on public assistance, so he shops at second hand stores… his clothes are inexpensive and not stylish. That was his backstory and we dressed him accordingly.”
It was also a matter of making Phoenix comfortable in his attire, which wasn’t easy since he constantly lost weight from fitting through shooting (a total of 30 pounds). The trousers and shirts were all custom (and distressed), with a few vintage sweater finds.
There was an arc to the way Fleck dressed on his way to becoming Joker. And to achieve this transformation, Bridges recombined parts of his wardrobe and clown costume. “Things that are based on what a guy would really have,” he said. He also took his cues from the writer, who wrote in the script “a rust suit Arthur had for many years,” which translated into a rust-colored waistcoat, a mustard-toned vest and a patterned bottle-green shirt. The designer created a gold vest and a necktie for his clown outfit that gives insight into his pending mental breakdown when worn to his mother’s funeral. “I felt three colors should go together: green, gold, and red, which was a really strong combination.” That meant forsaking the old standby of The Joker, purple, but Bridges harkened back to Cesar Romero’s outrageous Joker from Batman series in accentuating the green (even recommending a broccoli look for the clown wig).
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