Mon Oct 13 12:20:00 UTC 2025: **Summary:**

Luca Guadagnino’s new thriller, “After the Hunt,” starring Julia Roberts as a Yale professor, explores power dynamics and optics in a post-#MeToo landscape through its characters’ sartorial choices. Costume designer Giulia Piersanti uses clothing to express subtle nuances, such as a student’s yearning for her professor’s approval. Piersanti’s experience in high fashion, including her current role at Celine, informs her approach to costume design, allowing her to create wardrobes that convey character psychology and social dynamics.

**News Article:**

**”After the Hunt”: Fashion Speaks Volumes in Guadagnino’s New Thriller**

VENICE, Italy – Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” premiering at the Venice Film Festival, delves into a complex world of power, accusation, and Ivy League academia, with Julia Roberts leading the cast. But beyond the tense dialogue and unflinching performances of Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri, the film’s costumes emerge as a powerful storytelling tool.

Costume designer Giulia Piersanti, also head of knitwear at Celine, uses clothing to subtly reveal character motivations and social hierarchies. Roberts’ character, a stylish Yale professor, favors tailored, cream-colored pieces from luxury brands like The Row and Celine, while Edebiri’s character emulates this look with younger, more accessible designs.

“I wanted to play around with the idea of the same type of looks but worn by different personalities and therefore with different styling and proportions,” Piersanti told CNN. “If you notice the women in the film, they all wear very similar items: blazers, button downs, it’s very academic. But Alma is the chicer contemporary version, while Maggie, who emulates Alma, wears a younger version of her looks.”

Piersanti’s approach highlights how fashion choices, conscious or subconscious, can communicate volumes. Her long history in the fashion industry, from her early days at Miu Miu to her current role at Celine, has honed her ability to understand the relationship between clothing and identity. This is the same empathetic observation that she employs for both fashion design and costume design.

Having previously worked with Guadagnino on projects like “A Bigger Splash” and “Call Me by Your Name,” Piersanti has become a trusted collaborator, known for her visually arresting style. In “After the Hunt,” she uses blazers, trousers, and loafers to create an angular feel for most of the cast, reflecting the film’s themes of power and rigidity, while the style of Philip Glass and the late filmmaker David Lynch inspired the wardrobe of Alma’s psychologist husband.

“After the Hunt” promises to be a stylish exploration of complex issues, where the clothes are as sharp as the dialogue.

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