After the Hunt Costumed Designer on Julia Roberts Suiting Inspiration

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Yale University just might be the most fashionable campus in the world — at least in “After the Hunt,” Luca Guadagnino’s latest film where Celíne blazers, Totême suits and Lemaire coats abound. For costume designer Giulia Piersanti, who also serves as Celíne’s knitwear head, dressing the film’s bookish sophisticates was a natural fit.

“Blazers are basically a character’s armor in this movie,” Piersanti tells Variety.

In the film, Julia Roberts plays Alma Imhoff, a tenured philosophy professor at Yale whose carefully constructed world begins to unravel when one of her star protégés, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), accuses Alma’s close friend and colleague, Henrik (Andrew Garfield), of sexual assault. Alma, known for her intellectual rigor and smooth control in academic circles, is torn between her loyalties to Hank and the urgent demands of truth and justice in a Tár-like #MeToo reckoning.

Roberts plays Alma “with a coldly compelling sardonic spikiness,” as Variety’s Owen Gleiberman points out. When it came to the clothing, Piersanti portrayed this icy, imperious air through muted color palettes, straight tailoring and unbranded pieces. “My general mood board for the ‘Ivy League style’ focused on timeless elegance and a visually cold, constrained aesthetic.”

In addition to avoiding trends or any sense of “warmth or coziness,” she also intentionally used no heels, skirts, dresses or knitwear. “I was aiming for a look that felt inherited, intellectual and slightly masculine in its constraint — a wardrobe that didn’t have a lot of comfort or overt femininity.”

Alma’s standout blazers throughout the film are her classic houndstooth Céline jacket and a structured, bold white Totéme jacket, the latter of which is the viewer’s first sartorial introduction to Alma — lounging in a low-lit cocktail bar, dragging a cigarette as she cheekily debates the morality of Heigle and Aristotle with her underlings. She imbibes red wine in her $1,000 white suit with as much unconcern as she does waving away’s Hedrick’s accusations of Freud’z Nazism.

“I specifically wanted white and clean lines to make her a beacon in the room,” Piersanti says. It’s a complex dichotomy that makes her dangerous allure feel palpable from the jump.

But any Roberts fan knows that the Oscar-winning actor herself was one of the first to redefine the power suit — not as corporate armor, but as a symbol of self-possession. Piersanti’s mood board for Alma included images of Roberts’ iconic 1990s suiting.

Julia Roberts at The 47th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, January 20, 1990 Credit: Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch /IPX

Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch/MediaPunch/IPx

Long before quiet luxury had a name, Roberts was pairing double-breasted blazers with silk blouses, pinstripe trousers with open collars and tuxedo jackets over bare skin. Her early-’90s looks leaned slouchy and masculine — Armani shoulders, oversized cuts and androgynous tailoring that are a clear inspiration for Alma’s coolly, understated style.

“For all characters, the emphasis was on sharp, straight silhouettes and classic, unbranded staple pieces that suggest an inherited intellectual taste, rather than fleeting fashion,” she says.

If Alma and her bold suiting is the nucleus of the film, the rest of the characters’ ensembles are built in dialogue with hers, each echoing or resisting her presence.

Maggie’s style is an “evolution of obsessive emulation,” Piersanti says. We see her in younger, slouchier iterations of Alma’s suiting, at one point even wearing a white tee and pants nearly identical to a monochromatic outfit we see Alma wearing in the classroom at the beginning of the film. Later on, as Maggie’s accusations against Henrik reach a boiling point, we see her in clothing that resemble his scruffy, worn-in attire, by the end swapping cardigans and blazers for a denim shacket that’s a clear nod to his denim polo uniform.

Henrik’s style is “classic, casual and worn down, a little scruffy,” Piersanti says. “He’s somebody who relies on his good looks and natural charm, without making a visible effort and that is reflected in his clothing.”

Unlike the buttoned-up suiting of his female colleagues, he wears thrifted Levi’s, corduroy blazers and rumpled Oxford shirts designed to disarm and project humility. It’s a counterpart to Maggie’s buttoned-up suiting, a reflection of her corrupt paragon of “woke” values that work to stifle her intellectual curiosity. At one point, Henrik even points to her saying, “Your generation, it’s so…tight.”