Poor Things star Emma Stone is ‘always half-dressed’ in the new flick from Yorgos Lanthimos, and costume designer Holly Waddington said that’s an intentional choice

Emma Stone fans are about to see the Oscar-winning actress “half dressed” for a lot of her new film, according to costume designer Holly Waddington.

Emma is set to play the recently resurrected Bella Baxter in Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Mark Ruffalo.

Brought back to life after her own suicide and implanted with the brain of her unborn baby, it’s up to Bella to discover how the world works – from money to sex.

And Holly explained to Vogue that the child-like idea of being mostly undressed stemmed from that idea. She said: “We committed to the idea that you’ll never see her properly dressed.

Like all children – I have two little children – when you dress them, very quickly they become undressed.

“So in everything you see, there’s something missing. She’s more dressed up top – she’ll have a voluminous blouse on but with a pair of knickers and bare feet. I wanted really childlike fabrics: quilting, ruffles, seersucker, things that felt a bit nappy-ish.

Bella is seen in ‘childlike’, ‘nappy-ish’ fabrics (Image: AP)
But in a nod to Bella’s growing sexuality, plenty of her wardrobe also references “female genitalia”.

Holly went on: “There’s a blouse we called the vagina blouse, then the clitoris blouse. They all have these orifices – a slash down the middle and then lots of pleats.”

Things get even more raunchy later on, as Emma’s character dons a “condom coat” while working in a brothel in Paris.

Holly refused to opt for black underwear – and instead made “big jackets out of wool with latex poured over”.

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At one point, Emma wears a ‘condom coat’ (Image: Searchlight Pictures)
She explained that Bella wears a “little pac-a-mac” the colour of a “cheese slice” which she wears for her first sexual encounter in the brothel.

Holly joked: “She is, essentially, wearing a giant condom. I basically wanted it to evoke the colour of a period condom. It sounds so revolting but that’s what I was thinking.”

Director Yorgos told Polygon that Emma “brought the sex and optimism” to the role, explaining: “What we wanted to do is deal with [sex] the same way that [we] dealt with anything else, like the same way that the character Bella doesn’t have any shame about anything, and no preconceived notions about anything. It’s the same with her about sex.

She ‘brought the sex’ to the new film (Image: Searchlight Pictures)
“So she had to feel no shame, and just explore it and experience it the same way she experiences food, or whatever else.

And some of it is pleasing, and some of it she wants to spit out.”

The happy ending also “came out of Bella”, with screenwriter Tony McNamara adding: “Like Yorgos says, being faithful to that character means you’re ultimately faithful to an idea of this sort of optimism about life’s adventure.”