Drop-Dead Designs

It’s the ultimate killer wardrobe. Joanna Eris, Ashley Judd’s murderous, blackmailing character in the surreal thriller “Eye of the Beholder,” wears a vintage, all-Valentino wardrobe that’s drop-dead gorgeous.

Costume designer Lizzy Gardiner borrowed clothes straight from the Rome-based designer’s extensive haute couture archives. The outfits not only give Judd a stunning presence, but illustrate why glamour and crime go so well together in the movies.

Here, Gardiner has teamed up again with her childhood friend from Australia, the director and writer Stephan Elliott, with whom she worked (and earned an Oscar) on the 1994 comedy “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”

Elliott, she said, told her to avoid the look of typical detective shows. With the Valentino archives at her disposal, that was hardly a problem. In “Eye of the Beholder,” which opened Friday to tepid reviews, Judd plays a glamorous contract killer stalked by a British Intelligence officer (Ewan McGregor) assigned to capture her. As he follows her on a crime spree that seems to take place in several decades and many American cities, he becomes obsessed and finally undone.

Judd’s character wears her sexy suits and elegant fur coats as a disguise. Clothes of such a sumptuous and attention-getting nature, after all, are a distraction that can cloak the wearer’s personality . . . and Eris is a criminal trying to hide from everyone, including herself.

For Judd’s well-dressed murderer, Gardiner invoked an unusual muse: her own mother.

“I had quite a glamorous mother who was wandering around with a baby on her hip and a cocktail in her hand, dressed in head-to-toe Valentino,” said Gardiner, on the phone from Australia. “She was an inspiration to me. I’ve had this thing for Valentino ever since.”

Her family was not wealthy, and her mother’s clothes were quite an extravagance. “God knows what we ate,” she said, “but we looked fabulous.”

Gardiner used Valentino pieces from a range of eras to match the story’s sense of distorted time. (Some scenes appear to be taking place in the ‘40s or ‘50s and others in the present day.)

“Stephan and I wanted to make a film that was timeless,” said Gardiner. “You really don’t know where and when you are. You don’t know if it’s the past, or the present or the future. I didn’t want to make it clearly any periods. And Valentino crosses so many decades, he could do it.”

To that end, Valentino’s comprehensive archives were indispensable. The company has kept every haute couture dress the designer has made.

Valentino said he was happy to loan his costly designs to the movie crew.

“I was confident that our clothes were in good hands,” he said. “An Academy Award-winning costume designer like Ms. Gardiner has an appreciation for the value of archival pieces.”

And, in a practice unusual in Hollywood, the clothes were lent, not rented.

“It would have been impossible for us to even pay a fraction of what they were worth,” Gardiner said. “It was done on good faith and in such a way that if we caused any damage that we would have to pay for it.”

The clothes also had some surprises: “We’d look in a skirt,” said Gardiner, “and see Jerry Hall’s name inscribed along the waistband.” And, she added, “I don’t think it’s true that today’s models are thinner.”

In all, she used about 150 items, including Valentino accessories, to assemble 30 outfits. Every night, the wardrobe was locked up, and protected by a security guard.

“I spent the entire time being incredibly paranoid and uptight,” she said. “And there wasn’t one piece that was damaged.”

McGregor’s wardrobe took all the abuse instead.

To illustrate his emotional degeneration, Gardiner put McGregor in the same utilitarian, quilted nylon jacket and beat-up brogues throughout the film. His red jacket was modeled on one that Stephan Elliott wore during a traumatic childhood episode.

The original jacket, Gardiner said, “was cheap and you couldn’t damage it too much. He wore it to the Skippy Park--the kangaroo park--and he was attacked by a kangaroo that had grabbed him by the toggles and dragged him across the park. You can just imagine what Stephan was doing to the kangaroo to have it attack him,” she said.

Elliott had other bad memories that he imposed on his film’s supporting players, which included Patrick Bergin, k.d. lang, Genevieve Bujold and Jason Priestley. Elliott cast Priestley as a drifter with a bad bleach job inspired by one of Elliott’s old hairstyles.

“Stephan and I have a habit of working out our childhood demons through our films,” said Gardiner. “Mine was my incredibly glamorous mother drinking cocktails and wearing Valentino.”