Challengers Costume Analysis - alexander mcqunt
I am for sure Luca Guadagnino pilled, but after watching Challengers, I felt reborn. There is so many things I would like to say right now, but my awareness of a digital footprint is telling me to pull it together. Instead, we’re going to get to the job at hand and discuss the costumes. As you all know, this is a Jonathan Anderson stan account, so when I found out he was doing the costumes for the movie, I knew we’d be in for a treat— and a treat it was!
As usual, a warning that there will definitely be spoilers, because for this movie especially, I feel like the clothing is heavily interwoven into the storyline. So, if you haven’t watched it yet, please go do yourself that incredible favor, and I’ll be here when you get back xoxo.
Anyway, let’s get into it.
As I mentioned, the costumes for Challengers were done by Jonathan Anderson, who is the creative director of Loewe and JW Anderson. Anderson and the film’s director, Luca Guadagnino, naturally became friends after Guadagnino was blown away by the designer’s first JW Anderson collection; Anderson will also be designing the costumes for Guadagnino’s next film, Queer.
Guadagnino is no stranger to working with designers on his films, but tapping Anderson to work on Challengers was an especially brilliant pairing. Jonathan Anderson is known for bringing magic to the mundane. He takes classic, basic styles and makes them compelling— call it surrealist normcore if you will. So, what better designer to do the costumes for a movie full of normal clothes?
Through Anderson’s work as a creative director, we often see him influenced by art and film, while also being really tapped into internet culture and really just culture at large. He explores queer culture in a way that is complimentary of the homoeroticism throughout Challengers and the way basic pieces are styled in the movie.
In an interview with W Magazine, Anderson talked about how he was obsessed with America and how Americans buy the brand. So he wanted to incorporate this idea of how one becomes successful through branding.
Using Roland Barthes theories on semiotics, we can see that fashion is full of signs and symbols. You can take something like a plain white t-shirt, that is incredibly mundane and often associated with a cool effortlessness, and change its meaning when placing it in a different context. With Tashi throwing Art’s white t-shirt on to go see Patrick, it becomes messy. As part of a uniform, with a logo, it becomes that symbol of success Anderson spoke of.
Now, Challenger’s follows tennis champion, Art Donaldson, who is planning a comeback with the help of his wife Tashi Duncan, a tennis prodigy who had to retire after an injury stopped her career short. Tashi enters Art as a wildcard in a Challenger event, hoping to reignite his fire in the game, where he faces his old friend, and his wife’s old lover, Patrick Zweig. The trio met at the US Open as teenagers, and after a night of kissing in their hotel room, Tashi tells the boys that she’ll give whoever wins the junior singles final, the next day, her number. The winner is Patrick. Tashi and Art go to Stanford, while Patrick goes professional, and Tashi and Patrick have been together for a year, which Art isn’t thrilled about, so he starts to meddle, which leads to them breaking up. Patrick doesn’t go to Tashi’s match that day, she gets injured, Art is there for her, and she tells Patrick to leave her alone. Then years later Tashi and Art reconnect, get married, have a child, and yeah. There’s cheating, there’s manipulation, there’s tension, there’s drama, etc.
I’ve seen many people say that Patrick loves Art, Art loves Tashi, and Tashi loves tennis, but I don’t think it’s that simple. All of these people are deeply broken, and their clothing portrays to other, who they want to be seen as. In this regard, Patrick is the most honest. Early on in the movie, Tashi compares tennis to a romantic relationship, and as someone who lost the biggest love of her life, tennis, at such a young age, she’s looking to find that passion again through watching some good fucking tennis, which in the end, she does.
I saw Zendaya say somewhere that the three of them move as one entity, and I completely agree. They are all different parts of one human body, and their behaviors are all conditioned by one another.
Now, let’s get into each character a bit more individually— starting with Art. Art is a nice boy, but not necessarily a good guy, however, he sure knows how to play the good guy. He uses this softness as manipulation to get what he wants. We see him use his dying grandmother as a tactic to get Patrick to lose their game in a flashback scene, and then years later when Patrick sees Tashi at a hotel in Atlanta, we see that she’s engaged, and she tells Patrick that the ring was Art’s grandmother’s, who has passed away. This almost implies that Tashi had no choice but to accept the proposal, and he continues to make her feel bad throughout the movie, because he’s a good guy. Art is kind of pathetic and for sure has a praise kink, but in terms of calculation, he seems to be the smartest of the three. This is something that he uses to make Tashi and Patrick feel like they are always doing something for his benefit. That same precision and calculation in his actions is reflected in his style.
Art’s uniforms are crispy. During the Challenger, he puts on clean Uniqlo polo after clean Uniqlo polo, as the previous one gets drenched with his sweat. His racquets switch from Babolat to Wilson to show the control Tashi has… well the control she thinks she has over him. Sure, he wore worn in boxers as a teenager, but he’s switched to big boy briefs as an adult. Even in flashbacks, he’s the perfect, polished American boy— colorful cotton button ups, baseball hats, and all.
Patrick, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. He wants what he can’t have, whether that be a successful career or relationship. In the flashbacks we see him longingly looking at Tashi’s posters and trophies at the Adidas party, and shortly after we see him look defeated when Art shuts down any possible allusion to a romantic relationship between the two of them. It’s clear that Patrick is more realized in his sexuality than Art is, which is something they come to terms with in very different ways. We see him embody this Peter Pan Syndrome that prevents him from facing the reality of his life, and so he’s stuck thinking about the past and a career he never had, and never will. All the while having lost the two people he ever cared about— at least that we’re aware of. He also comes from money, not that you’d ever know, since his bank account is running low and he sleeps in his beaten up, old car. He’s the kind of rich person that would Venmo you for a $10 Uber, but would be on an insanely luxurious vacation the next week, for sure.
Patrick looks like he smells, and according to a couple at a hotel that he’s trying and failing to check into, he does. He’s a little musty in a way that you might be into, I don’t know! His tennis uniforms are mismatched, and yet he still looks put together. It’s a comfort in being nonchalant that we often see from people who come from money. It’s a certain level of sophistication that comes from constantly being around those who are considered to have taste and to set the trends. It’s the understanding that you can be a little bit disheveled, because you have the cultural capital and status to back it up. He doesn’t have anything to lose. We see more shirt swapping here with Patrick wearing one of Art’s button ups in a flashback, as well as taking Tashi’s ‘I Told Ya’ t-shirt, and still having it years later. On a side note, the t-shirt is based on a shirt that JFK Jr. wore in a paparazzi shot, that Jonathan Anderson came across. They swap clothes like they swap each other, as if it’s second nature, as if they are one, and Patrick is at the center of it all. I don’t think they exist without him, at least not as passionately.
Patrick is a loser, and he knows he’s a piece of shit, but he’s also incredibly charming. He mirrors Tashi in a way that she doesn’t want to admit to herself.
Tashi’s put together persona is a facade. She’s projecting the best version of herself, and if you pulled one thread on her perfectly chosen clothes, she’d unravel. She wants you to know that she’s rich and better than you, and so we can look at Pierre Bourdieu’s suggestion that fashion is a form of cultural capital to help explain her stylistic choices. The things that Tashi chooses to wear, not only give the impression that she has it all under control, but are also signifiers of wealth, which to her, let other people know that she is above them. We see this in the un-ironic Chanel espadrilles, the Cartier bracelets, and the Panthère watch. It’s also a really great way to see the difference between old money and new money, when comparing the way Tashi and Art present themselves versus the way that Patrick does.
The boys see Tashi as a perfect fantasy, even before they know anything about her. Although she’s a combination of the two, she puts up the strongest front, not really ever letting her emotions shine through. In a flashback, when she gives Patrick unsolicited tennis advice while they’re hooking up, he tells her he doesn’t want to talk about tennis, and she feels rejected. She doesn’t view tennis as separate from herself, and when they get into an argument after this moment, she feels as if she’s won the fight, but Patrick still leaves, and we see her falter a bit. The ball is not actually in her court. Tashi also doesn’t come from money and she’s a Black woman, so she understands the power dynamics at play. We see her read Patrick to filth for his carelessness and ability to fall back on his trust fund, and we see her tell the boys that it’s important for her to go to college, so she has skills other than just hitting a ball with a racquet. So, when she gets the ability to live the life she can’t herself, through these two boys, to feel the way she once did on the court, she takes it.
In the flashbacks, Tashi wears a Juicy Couture zip-up when going to meet the boys in their hotel room, which is very fitting of the time, but with her period appropriate style, there are also some Loewe Easter eggs. Although the movie mainly takes place in 2019, there are a lot of current season Loewe handbags, and the blue dress she wears at the Adidas party is made from leftover materials from Loewe’s Fall 2020 collection. Jonathan Anderson used the fabric to create a dress reminiscent of a lot of paparazzi shots he saw of celebrities at that time, pairing it with a clunky shoe, to show that youthfulness in still figuring out your personal style. Tashi also wears a camel sweater, sans bra, as she talks to Patrick in an alleyway, and it’s interesting to see her style always be a little more suggestive when she’s around him, whereas around Art, she’s the perfect wife and perfect coach.
Honorable mention to sweat, which was truly an accessory, if not the fourth main character in this movie.
In conclusion, I this is still a Jonathan Anderson stan account, I am an Art apologist, and I want two boyfriends. OMW to watch this movie again… and again.
TTYL!!!
xx
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