Writer-director Peter Strickland is fascinated with our obsession with clothing. So much so that he turned that idea into a story about a killer dress slinking from victim to victim. The resulting film, In Fabric, stars Oscar-nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Sheila, a woman ready to move on with her life, who buys the perfect dress in a department store sale in preparation for a round of blind dates.
In In Fabric Strickland plays with our obsession with clothing and the lives they lived before they even came into our possession. Who wore this article of clothing first? Are they still alive? What’s the history behind that stain? Strickland spoke with Awards Daily about his unexpected inspirations from the film ranging from ASMR YouTube videos to the original Gervais version of The Office. As the interview progresses he challenges us to think about our clothes, and where they come from.
Awards Daily: I think there’s only one logical way to start this interview. How did you come up with the idea to center a film on a killer dress?
Peter Strickland: The idea came from shopping really, specifically at second hand stores. You’re immediately aware of death. There is a haunting there; you can find stains on clothing, sometimes you can smell the areas of outfits. It’s a weird thing because you’ll never really know what that person looked like. It activates the imagination and it lent into things I wanted to explore through these visceral reactions whether it be body dysmorphia or fetishism. There’s also this euphoria with clothing when it makes us feel great, how we can transform ourselves. That’s why I spent so long with Marianne’s character Sheila. You feel this sort of triumph when she tries on the dress and feels great until everything happens of course.
AD: Beyond this stunning red dress the film zeroes in on clothing in a lot of unexpected ways including a repetitive washing machine, childhood stories of clothing, department stores, and the list goes on. What else were you exploring through this focus on clothing?
PS: You’re kind of scratching the surface to be honest. There are the dreams of the dead mother. These feelings of clothing being very aggressive and powerful that you can’t get rid of. It evokes very strong emotions. I wanted to show clothing provoking people whether through grief, desire, lust, or even disgust.
All of this was presented in this ASMR world. I was watching some of those videos on Youtube and it really reminded me a lot of how I remembered those stores as a kid. Now a lot of clothing stores are like nightclubs with blaring music but back then they were very private, delicate spaces. They had a particular sound palette; the sounds of women muttering, the thin catalogue pages turning, very sensual sounds. That really fed into this mantra like quality which goes to the washing machine as well. So it goes back to me trying out all of these different ideas all to do with desire and anxiety in the equation of clothing.
AD: The film is set in 1993 but beyond a couple of details this is a story that could have easily been set in any recent decade. Why then?
PS: I would have set it now because the stores never change. They’ve always been this mixture of Victorian and Edwardian, a British quality that stops in the 70s. I wanted to set it now so that it would have this contrast rather than the seventies where there would have been none at all.
The reason I didn’t set it now was because I wrote Marianne’s character Sheila going into dating as her introduction. What she writes in that box is how she wants the world to see her, she’s putting on her best show in those 50 words. It’s a really interesting way to introduce a character to the audience showing how she wants to be seen and then making them guess who she really is. I settled on the 90s because it was the last time before online dating became dominant.
AD: There have been a lot of comparisons between your film and Giallo horror, particularly the original Suspiria but I also read that wasn’t something you were consciously drawing inspiration from. What were your major inspirations for the film?
PS: The main one was this department store in Redding called Jacksons. We modeled the store on that which was hard to do because they were different structures.
M.R. James was an inspiration with his ghost stories. They’re very quiet, very still, there is eeriness to them. It was a sense of the uncanny that a lot of his work had. I was inspired by ASMR videos. A lot of my inspiration came from things outside of film like Edward Kienholz who did the mannequin sculptures. It’s pretty much how I had nightmares of mannequins as a kid. These very scary mannequins that looked not damaged but kind of as if they had been through hell, really perverted actually. Red dripping down their faces. You felt sorry for them actually, very strong stuff.
There was a whole mixture of things. Harvey. Carnival of Souls. There was no specific film that inspired me instead it was a mixture of small things. The Office, The Ricky Gervais one, was actually one. It inspired me to look into my past and experience in white collar jobs. Then I thought it was a waste of my time but something like The Office really encouraged me to pull from those experiences and realize they weren’t a waste of time. Those experiences really served Marianne’s character in terms of seeing her frustrations at work.
AD: Speaking of the mannequins you use sexuality and clothing as a way for audiences to understand these characters in a really compelling way. How did that connection between clothing and sexuality come about in your writing process?
PS: If we have one thing that unites us as human beings it is desire. Not all of us have violence thank god. But with desire, even those that never have sex, we all experience desire. It’s kind of weird to portray now and feels like something to be ashamed of. Now there seems to be a lot of criticism against that kind of cinema. As long as you are protective of actors and discuss boundaries it’s something that is relevant and should be portrayed. Desire says so much about characters.
The mannequin scene came very quickly. I was listening to a piece of music and just wrote it. Actually I was stuck on a train and usually I can’t write on trains but there was a big delay and it came to me. The full scene was actually extended but we didn’t have time to finish shooting it. When the boss ejaculates it lands on the dress and it dries the next morning into this beautiful pattern which somebody buys. I regret not shooting that because it falls into this idea of sexual fluids which is an everyday thing on clothing and we just don’t talk about it. This idea that this blatant sexual fluid is for sale and someone mistakes it for this beautiful pattern, it’s something I wish I filmed. I wanted this blurring. The mannequins have human traits, they menstruate. The humans have mannequin traits, they’re bald. In that store are the mannequins turning into humans? Are humans turning into mannequins with these sexual rituals going on? I was exploring the idea of menstrual blood acting as a dye for the dress with this strong red color. At the end of the film you see threads coming out of characters veins in the sweatshop. It’s funny, some people are not happy about it which I respect. If one individual is disturbed or finds it repellent I wouldn’t judge or laugh at them but for someone to want it removed is ridiculous. In other films we see people dying and being mutilated but this is just a normal bodily function. The double standard is bizarre.
AD: You structured the film in a really interesting way almost episodically with two protagonists in Sheila and Reg who never cross paths. What made you want to structure the film this way and were there any connections between the two characters?
PS: It was random really. I wrote one draft where Reg fixes Sheila’s washing machine but the problem with that was that it lost its randomness and then felt predestined. It was very important to have this disconnection between the two characters even though they lived in the same town. Actually, I originally wrote a much longer draft with six characters so you really get this sense that it goes from person to person to person to person. I couldn’t get anyone interested in doing it unless I cut it down. What you see is a result of it just being shortened. I had a choice to keep all six characters and make each story shorter but the problem with that is that you didn’t spend time with them thus creating this danger, the danger of not caring about them and the danger of me just offering the audience this anti-consumerist message. I’m happy to satirize the story in the background but I think it’s important to not judge the characters and have affection for them, to spend time with them.
Distributed by A24 ‘In Fabric’ will be in theaters this Friday, December 6th, and on demand beginning December 10th
