If you come away from watching Luca Guadagnino’s new movie “After the Hunt” inspired to break out your sharpest blazer and white denim, you’re not alone. Costume designer Giulia Piersanti has been hearing nothing but that from people who have seen the film, which tickles her given she based Julia Roberts’ wardrobe on what she sees women actually wearing in real life.

“A lot of my research came from working women,” Piersanti says, over a Zoom call last week. “There were reference pictures that I found from women from the ’80s and today, and to me it’s a wardrobe that goes through time. When you say timeless, it’s really quite literally this.”

Piersanti, whose day job is head of knitwear for Celine, has done the costumes for close friend Guadagnino for several films now including, “A Bigger Splash,” “Call Me by Your Name,” “Suspiria” and “Bones and All.” The duo teamed back up for Guadagnino’s latest, “After the Hunt,” which stars Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield in a #MeToo-era drama set in the world of academia.  

“[Luca] has a way of sucking you into his characters and his story,” Piersanti says. “That always really gets me excited to start and participate in. And specifically to this film, the cast was really amazing to work and collaborate with. I am not going to get into the messages behind the film and stuff, but of course the world of this academic, cold world was quite interesting to get into.”

Each of the three leads wear versions of a similar wardrobe. “I picked a very focused amount of styles and types of things that I wanted to use in the film. They turn around on almost all the characters, just in different ways of styling them,” Piersanti says. “There’s always clean lines and there’s no softness in the costumes, there’s no prints, there’s no bright colors, so it was very focused, especially because it’s a contemporary film.”

Roberts plays Alma, a Yale philosophy professor seeking tenure, who is the picture of working woman poise in oversize blazers, lots of white, loafers and trousers. Most of the work Piersanti has done with Guadagnino has been of a previous time, so it was new to her to work in contemporary clothing. She bought mostly for Roberts from brands like The Row, Toteme, Celine and Lemaire, with jewelry from Ilaria Icardi and Cartier. Her mood board for the character included photos of Tina Chow, Camilla Nickerson, Carolyn Bessette and Roberts herself. Things came full circle when during the film’s press tour, Roberts wore the first designs by Dario Vitale for Versace, an oversize blazer, shirt and denim look that could’ve easily fit into the costumes of “After the Hunt.”

“I was told that that was done on purpose,” Piersanti says. “I know Dario, he’s a really sweet guy, and he didn’t tell me directly, but he told our friend in common that they were trying to do that. It was so perfect, I thought it was really funny.”

One of the earliest scenes in the film shows Roberts hosting a cocktail party in her home, dressed in a white suit from Toteme. 

“It’s the first time we really see Alma in her habitat, and I wanted her to have this sort of allure and confidence to her. I didn’t want to put her in a dress. I was quite specific about putting her in a suit,” Piersanti says. “I thought in this dark living room scene she’d really pop out and look confident and chic. There’s no shirt, no blouse, no nothing. It’s just a suit and sharp lines and the jewelry matches it. It’s very kind of clean, bold jewelry and that’s it.”

Guadagnino had noted to Piersanti that Alma was an upper-class woman, which informed the wardrobe pricing, while Maggie, played by Edebiri, was trying to emulate Alma but on a younger woman’s budget. For Alma’s The Row, Maggie wore The Frankie Shop versions. Piersanti also dressed her in Ralph Lauren, John Smedley, Sebago and vintage Gioielleria Pennisi jewelry. 

The final scene of the film, which we will not spoil here, shows Alma and Maggie in different stages of life, and in different dress: Alma is wearing a knit for the first time in the film, and Maggie is dressed in the only print in the whole movie, via a Wales Bonner dress.

“There’s a switch. She’s all of a sudden not emulating Alma anymore. We don’t know if she’s come to terms with herself in some ways or if she’s emulating someone else in her new life. We don’t know this about her, but now there’s a real gap between the two. And I wanted that to be quite clear,” Piersanti says.

Garfield’s character Hank, meanwhile, is “steps away from the others,” Piersanti says. 

“Luca told me he was coming from a different background, and you imagine that he’s gotten where he is through his good looks and working that out.”

Her mood board for him included pictures of a young Harrison Ford, and she dressed him in lots of vintage, including vintage Ralph Lauren.

“Even at the dinner, he’s still wearing his scruffy look, but he just puts on a blazer on top of it,” she says. “He’s just a charmer and he knows it.”

As the film progresses and the characters unravel, Piersanti worked to make their appearances become less and less polished, while maintaining the structured vision.

“There’s sharp lines, there’s no soft fabrics, there’s no prints, no bright colors. It was super focused, very controlled, like the story and like the characters,” Piersanti says. “Everybody’s coming out at the seams, but quite controlled.”