How 'The Substance' Dressed Its Monster

Earlier in Back Row:

After costume designer Emmanuelle Youchnowski first read the script for The Substance, by director and screenwriter Coralie Fargeat, she made a Pinterest board.

“When you read it, you have all the visuals in your head, because the characters don’t speak too much. It's a lot of description,” Youchnowski told me in a phone interview last week. She pulled fashion images, but also photos of Beyoncé and Dua Lipa and the poster for the movie Queen Margot, depicting a white ballgown covered in blood, as inspiration for the finale monster scene. Youchnowski showed her Pinterest board to Fargeat and got the job, which involved months of custom-making nearly everything that stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley wore.

The Substance follows actress Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Moore, after she gets fired from her job hosting a television workout show for being too old. She decides to take a mysterious drug called “The Substance,” which unleashes a younger, hotter version of herself named Sue, played by Qualley. Sue can only be out and about for a week at a time, but starts abusing the privilege and staying out longer, leaving Moore increasingly deformed.

The Substance is body horror, and yes, it’s gross! But it was also one of the most spellbinding and visually arresting movies I saw in 2024, and will surely earn some Oscar nominations this week. Ahead, Youchnowski explains how she put together the looks for the film, which was an incredibly detailed and work-intensive process.

The movie’s time period is purposefully unclear. Did that give you more freedom to play with the clothes?

It's set in 2025, but we don't know, really. Also, we think it's in L.A., but we don't know if it's winter because Elisabeth’s coat is very warm, and in L.A., nobody wears a coat like that. It was good to play with weather, with time period, and also the French and American references. I'm French, but I wanted it to feel a little American.

One of — if not the — most memorable looks was Demi Moore’s yellow coat. Is that something people can go out and buy?

No, we made it. In Coralie’s script, she calls it a yellow coat, but we don't know if it's mustard yellow or yellow yellow. I bought like 20 coats, but we couldn’t find the right shape and the right color. Sometimes it was too mustard, then a little too green. And we wanted yellow like the sun of L.A. and egg yolk, one of the references of The Substance. So it was very difficult to find a good one. Also, it's like armor with a big shoulder, a big pocket. At the end of the movie, Demi was hiding inside it, so I wanted it to envelope the body. So I drew it, and we bought a lot of yellow fabrics. We found one in London. And we made it in a month.

Was that the most work-intensive item to make?

Margaret wore a black bathrobe with a dragon on the back. We made it by hand. I think it took two months. It's around 10,000 pieces.

How did you think about the juxtaposition between Elisabeth Sparkle and Sue?

I wanted Elisabeth to have a masculine, macho wardrobe. So she wears suits, she wears primary colors, like yellow, blue, red, and black, in shiny fabrics. Even the leotard of Elisabeth is cyan blue. She wears a lot of suits with the yellow coat. She doesn’t show a lot of skin except the dress with no back.

It was very important to see her back because after she takes The Substance, Sue sews her up along her spinal column. It was very important to play with zippers. The red dress she wears for the date was Balmain, but it also had a zip in the back. Sue also has a zip on the bodysuit she wears on the motorcycle. But unlike Sue, Elisabeth didn’t show a lot of skin except for the dress without a back.

Sue shows legs, she shows boobs, she shows everything. She is very feminine and sexy, she wears a lot of pink, metallic. She wears the black Louboutin boots — a lot of cliché pieces [for the male gaze]. Like the white tennis skirt.

Where did you get Sue’s pink workout look?

We made it custom. But my inspiration was a clip of Beyoncé from the “Blow” video, where Beyoncé and the dancers are wearing neon and also metallic. I love Beyoncé, of course, and also Dua Lipa. In concert Dua Lipa wears something like Sue, with a skirt where we see the tummy. We made also made Sue’s little bombers by hand. But it was important for me to put the S on the back for Sue, but also for “snake.”

How did you work with Coralie? Watching the movie, you can tell that she had such a specific vision for every frame.

She was very cool. For the monster, we had a lot of problems because the fabric was not exactly what we wanted. I am a perfectionist. For Sue’s Catwoman bodysuit, we made it and we made the fabric. I printed a snake scale on it, but it wasn’t shiny enough, so I was very, very frustrated about that, and I did it again, but Coralie never said, “It's not good.” She said, “It's OK.” We worked very well together.

You have to walk us through how you dressed the monster at the end. I’m guessing you didn’t have Margaret Qualley wearing all those prosthetics at your disposal?

It was difficult. Normally I do the [normal] dress first and then destroy it. But that wasn’t working. I needed to think about the monster dress first and then the Sue dress.

The skirt was easy. But the top was very difficult because the monster had [many] boobs. So when we went to London, where the prosthetic was, we could see what we were going to do with the dress. We also had a little monster made. So I did, like, a Barbie dress for the little monster, which I also showed Coralie.

Let’s talk about Dennis Quaid’s character, who’s is supposed to be disgusting, right? How did you come up with his wardrobe?

Everyone at lunchtime dresses boring. It's like, a white shirt and a navy suit. Dennis Quaid’s character is strange. It's very ugly when he speaks, when he moves, when he eats. I wanted his style to be very strange. Like what rich people wear. He wore suits by Etro, Dolce & Gabbana.

He wore a lot of color. The orange suit at the beginning was very important. With the blood orange and red [hallway], it's very beautiful.

It sounds like many of the costumes were custom.

Sometimes when we bought something, it wasn’t exactly what’s in your head. It was very important to draw it, to choose the right color. I mixed Demi’s purple shirt with the yellow coat and the blue suit. It was very important to mix the colors in the same palette. It's easier to make the clothes and choose the fabrics.

Now, everybody wants buy this yellow coat! [Ed. note: The closest match I could find was this “sun yellow” coat by Nanushka, on sale now for $525.]

How did the cast react to their costumes?

We did I think three fittings for Margaret and Demi. The most complicated was for the leotard. I want the actresses to be comfortable in the clothes I do. It was easier to make it custom and then we can make changes to it together.

Demi, for example, she didn’t like a pocket [placement], so we could move it. But at the beginning, for the first fitting, we bought and tried a lot of things. It was very important to see each character in a silhouette. So when we loved a cut, I’d draw it and we could change the color and a lot of things.

Margaret and Demi are still my friends. We are very, very, very close. It was a pleasure to meet them and work with them.