Decoration of Independence

THE MOVIE: “Sleeping With the Enemy.”

THE SETUP: Battered East Coast wife (Julia Roberts, pictured) fakes death to escape psychotic husband (Patrick Bergin) and hides out in a small Midwest town where she meets nice drama teacher (Kevin Anderson).

THE LOOK: Under the deft hand of costume designer Richard Hornung, Roberts goes from the gorgeous fast-lane wife’s body-revealing, thigh-high, please-your-husband outfits to the post-getaway liberation of neo-hippie ensembles. There’s even a scene where two dresses move the plot along. Roberts chooses a pristine white linen and organdy style for a cocktail party. Her husband lets her know he’d prefer the sexier, barer, stretch gauze black number in her closet. She changes.

Once she makes her great escape, Roberts is all looseness and freedom--almost Woodstockian--in fit-and-flare, mid-calf dresses, light prints and little vests. Even her hair goes natural in free-form curls. On a date with Anderson, he lets her go wild in the drama department’s costume closet. The sequence shows off Roberts’ extraordinary beauty in a number of guises. There’s even a drag scene where she poses as a teen-age boy to elude her maniac husband. Remarkably, she makes the transformation with just a short wig, mustache, suede jacket, work shirt and jeans.

THE LABELS: Hornung himself pieced together the pivotal white dress but chose a Giorgio di Sant’Angelo as the slinky black number. He shopped Madeleine Gallay and other Sunset Plaza boutiques for Roberts’ pre-liberation East Coast look. Oddly enough, much of her neo-hippie, Midwest wardrobe came from the Matsuda showroom in New York. The floral vest is from Emporio Armani. The blue-and-white print dress is by Monah-Li. The costume sequence was put together from regional theater collections and a San Fernando Valley rental agency, Private Collection.

THE PAYOFF: Roberts and Hornung prove a woman can look just as appealing dressed for the Corn Belt as in big-city constricting come-on clothes.