Miyako Bellizzi Talks ‘Marty Supreme’ Movie Costumes

It’s a few days after the L.A. premiere of “Marty Supreme,” but costume designer Miyako Bellizzi is more excited to talk about bringing the film back home for the New York premiere. 

“We’re all New Yorkers, and so those are our people,” says Bellizzi. “It’s where the film is from, and where we’re from.”

“Marty Supreme” is writer-director (and New York native) Josh Safdie’s follow-up to “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time.” All three films exist within an insiders’ New York, inhabited by the hustler mentality of their main characters. In the case of “Marty Supreme,” it’s a Lower East Side New York circa 1952, and Timothée Chalamet stars as shoe salesman and table tennis champion Marty Mauser.

Bellizzi, who met Safdie through mutual friends over a decade ago, also worked as the costume designer for the director’s two previous features. “We’ve grown together, and we’ve learned how to work together over the years,” she says of her collaboration with Safdie. “With every film we’re getting better in terms of collaborating. It’s really fun to grow with someone.”

Bellizzi had a leg-up coming onboard “Marty Supreme”: she was already a longtime enthusiastic vintage collector. 

“I had an understanding of the shapes and the silhouettes and the fabrics. I’ve collected gabardine shirts since high school, so this period was something I was very knowledgeable about, before this film was even a thing,” she says. “This is my favorite era.”

Bellizzi and Safdie focused on reflecting “hyper reality” on-screen, which meant staying true to the sartorial landscape of the time and location. Her process for “Marty Supreme” was anchored in research, driven by archival magazine photography and documentaries of the era. 

“It was important to have an understanding of the world, and understanding of what was happening post-World War II 1952 — and not just New York City, Lower East Side,” she says, adding that beyond the specificity of New York City, the film also touches on “the whole world,” with its characters traveling to London and Japan.  

“It’s really important you get a sense of how people actually dressed in those times in different parts of the world,” she says. “I needed to know how people dressed in London, but not just how they dressed, what was available,” she adds, noting that certain fabrics weren’t available in the post-war aftermath — no green wool in London, for example. 

Ken Jacobs’ 1955 documentary “Orchard Street,” about the Lower East Side in the 1950s, proved to be particularly influential. “That became our bible of the Lower East Side,” says Bellizzi of the documentary, which highlighted the “Zoot suits” and go-getter mentality of the neighborhood, along with the mix of cultures that birthed multiple trends. “The style was very nuanced and a little bit different, and so that’s kind of what I wanted to bring with Marty’s character,” she adds.

Menswear plays a large role in the film, and Bellizzi aimed to root Marty’s eccentricity through his suiting.

“One of the key looks was not how he dresses on the everyday, but who he wants to present himself as when he’s traveling,” she says. “In London, he’s dressing for the job, dressing for the man he wants to be. And so for me, it was like, ‘what is that?  Who is the man that Marty wants to be?’ It’s not who he is. This is a Lower East Side kid that has these big dreams.”

“Who is the man Marty wants to become?” was the central question that guided Chalamet’s suiting. 

“It was scripted that he brings his fancy suit to London. That was a big one for me,” says Bellizzi. “What is that fancy suit, and how can we present him in a way that he looks important, even though he’s not? That really informed his character.”

She ended up dressing Marty in a double-breasted peak lapel gray suit with subtle red pinstripes, modeled after the hustlers of the Lower East Side, “because those are the guys that he would look up to,” says Bellizzi.

“I had to find that suit first in order to inform everything else,” she adds. “He wears the pants of the suit when he plays table tennis. We break up the suits a lot, but he wears the pants all the time.”

Bellizzi tied Marty’s arc back to the Robert Pattinson-led “Good Time.” Like Pattinson, Chalamet spends much of the film on the go. “He has his work uniform in the shoe store, and then he runs home, he goes to London, he goes back. There’s a lot of moving parts,” says Bellizzi. 

Bellizzi worked with a 20-person in-house tailor team, and the majority of the costumes for the principal cast were custom-built, from the suits worn by Marty and his benefactors to the uniforms worn by the Harlem Globetrotters and all of the uniforms and warm-up looks for the various table tennis competitors.

“To differentiate the teams when you see them all together on that big stage, I wanted to give everyone individual style and color palette,” she says. “Vietnam was baby pink polos versus India’s burgundy, and Brazil is dark green and Germany was yellow and black.”

Although the film is male-dominated, key women in the film include Marty’s mother, played by Fran Drescher, Marty’s childhood friend Odessa A’zion, and Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays a glamorous older actress living in the Upper East Side. 

“She was my dream character,” says Bellizzi of Paltrow. Marlene Dietrich and Grace Kelly inspired the character’s wardrobe, with Bellizzi referencing designers like Givenchy, Balenciaga and Dior’s New Look. 

“I wanted to keep her really classic and sophisticated,” she says, adding that her favorite costumes for the character were the cape she wears when Marty sees the actress walk through a hotel lobby in London for the first time, and the skirt suit she wears to watch Marty compete soon after.

“I collect skirt suits. My prom dress was a 1950s gown that is similar to Gwyneth’s,” says Bellizzi, describing the character’s personal appeal. “I feel like I’ve been working towards her character my whole life.”