Power of Appearance: Costumes in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women

Article by Emily Wood

Edited by Sarah McCorie

Perhaps one of the most striking features of Greta Gerwig’s brilliant coming-of-age period drama Little Women (2019) is the close attention paid to costume design by 2019 Academy Award winner for best costume design, Jacqueline Durran.

Durran’s recognition of the importance of dress as symbolic of the March sisters’ characters – Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth – entailed her to seek to do more with their outfits than merely resemble contemporary Victorian fashion. As Durran explains, “Clothes are part of the girls’ journey into the world, part of their creation of themselves as characters”. Indeed, clothes in the film take on the personality of the characters, showcasing them as women coming of age and discovering their own unique identity. Durran ditched the traditional Victorian drab dress-code in favour of brighter, bolder apparel, allowing for a modern audience to connect and relate with, not only the clothes, but the characters themselves.

Having drawn inspiration from French Impressionist paintings, Durran tailored each of the girls’ clothing to represent the image of the women they believed themselves to be developing into – as noted in Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel. Jo seeks to express her tomboyish nature, adopting plainer, coarser fabrics; whilst Amy dons luxury dresses, swamping herself in soft satins and rich cottons. Meg, the more rationally minded of the four sisters, gravitates towards practical, modest attire; while Beth embraces softer pallets, reflecting her genteel nature. Ingeniously, however, the sisters and their mother each share one another’s clothing, symbolising the tight familial bonds which unite the March women together. Durran explained that “the other clothes sharing was Marmee wearing things from Jo, Beth wearing things from Jo, and then, Jo wearing things from Beth. Everybody used the same shawls and things because they were just things that would have just been in the house. Someone would need it and then another person would use it.” Furthermore, each of the sisters have a colour scheme. “Jo’s was red, Meg’s was green, Beth’s colour was pink or brown, and Amy’s was light blue,” Durran commented. “But we didn’t really want to put an actress in green over and over again, so I made colour combinations. I didn’t want to be prescriptive, so I played around, a bit of this colour, a bit of that.” The consideration of individuality throughout the costume design does great justice to Alcott’s forward-thinking, socially progressive novel, in which she advocates for female self-expression and liberation.

Durran’s thought behind the March women’s clothing expresses an appeal to the feminist sentiment within all of us. The March sisters are individually strong women, with contrasting, unique personalities, represented by their differing attires. Yet, their sisterly adoration and care for one another, and the extent to which together they provide a strong loving unit, is reflected in the sharing of their clothes. With each of them, always, there is a piece of their sisters. Dominated by female characters, the film focuses on the lives of these ‘little women’, and it is Durran’s work which aids the sisters profound presence on the screen.