By Staci Layne Wilson
@StaciWilson

Mad Max: Fury Road costume designer Jenny Beavan won the Oscar a few years back for The King’s Speech (and has been nominated for many other films), but she’s never had quite the thrill she did working with director George Miller on his retro-futuristic reboot, which is going #1 with a bullet (OK, an arsenal).

“Costumes are all about storytelling with clothes,” explained Beavan in a recently interview with Yahoo. “Once you are embedded in the George Miller world of Mad Max, things begin to be clear in their own mad way! I love creating characters, so give me a bunch of old bits and pieces, car accessories, ethnic bits of fabric, leather, string, and a character I can hinge onto and I am happy!”

Apocalyptic couture is nothing new in the movies, though it hit on an upward trajectory in the late 1960s with the amazing, never-before-seen looks unveiled in The Planet of the Apes series. Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s – A Boy and His Dog, the original Mad Max, and Tank Girl to name a few, the look became such a fixture that even when we look at modern day movies (such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse), there’s no improvement. It seemed the dystopian fashion well had run as dry as the Wasteland’s Citadel – until now.

In Mad Max: Fury Road, there are so many elaborate, rejuvenated and different twists on old threads, it’s eye-popping. In vogue in the fight for the future are toothy mouth masks, punky leather moto jackets, feathered football shoulder pads, and bandeaux wrap dresses made of mummy-like muslin. It’s not simple to survive in style. “Every costume, mask, piece of footwear and accessory was thought out, concept-drawn, reworked, tried out in model form, in prototype. Nothing came easily,” Beavan said.

The Five Wives (models Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Riley Keough, and Courtney Eaton) wore virginal white, while the one-armed heroine of the story, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) is combat-cool in her army garb, biker boots, belts, scarves, and holsters.

Max Rockatansky’s (Tom Hardy) look echoes that of what the haute hero wore in the first two sequels to Mad Max. While role-originator Mel Gibson also wore the single shoulder pad in Beyond Thunderdome, Beavan said she took most of her costuming inspiration from The Road Warrior. “The leather elements of his basic costume are all the Mel Gibson look [taken from the original costume, borrowed from a collector], remade in Namibia in my workroom into multiples.”

Also, Hardy is facially attired in an iron mask during the first third of Mad Max: Fury Road. Instead of assistants standing by with needles and thread, “We had a maintenance crew with welding equipment!” The mask was in multiples of various plastics from hard to soft. As for the other mug-clutching mouth guard, the one worn by warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Bryne), it was inspired by equine teeth – that’s one gift-horse you definitely don’t want to look in the kisser. In any case, I have a feeling that one accessory we won’t be seeing on sale this summer.

Mad Max: Fury Road opens nationwide today. Go for the fury, stay for the fashion. (Read my review of the film here.)

Mad Max Fashion — Apocalyptic Chic

Photos: (c) Warner Bros.