The Hundred Foot Journey

Pierre-Yves Gayraud is a costume designer and actor, known for The Bourne Identity (2002), Cloud Atlas (2012), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), and The Hundred Foot Journey (2013). I really find it interesting when you have designers that can jump from historical or futuristic settings to completely casual or regular situations. IN this post I will focus on Gayraud's work in The Hundred Foot Journey because none of us has done a movie about chefs or cooking.

Something very interesting of this movie is that it brings out a beautiful juxtaposition between the French and Indian cultures. The movie focuses on the culinary battle that is fought among two restaurants in the country side of France. However, one can see this contrast not only in the food they prepare, but also in how they are dressed.

To me in a very real way, the costumes in this movie reflect both the personalities and the cooking styles of the restaurants. On one side you have Madame Mallory who expects nothing, but visually beautiful and  perfectly cooked food served at her restaurant and on the other you have Hassan, who is definitely not quite so intricate.

Madame Mallory wears a tailored skirt suit, that reflects her high standards when letting her chefs know that a sad overcooked asparagus had been served last night. All of her clothes are very high class and very fashionable keeping her in the French look.






Hassan on the other side with some rather shabby clothes and some other that border on totally tacky like this print pleated shirt is an accurate representation of his Indian cuisine. His food is not really something about finesse, its really out there.

It is also interesting to see how the rest of Hassan's family is dressed. You can see that some of them are trying harder to better blend in in their new setting by wearing formal clothes in the same color pallet, while others are still wearing some rather noticeable colors or patterns.This is specially true about the dad who in this particular scene is wearing a green jacket in a sea of dim grey and khaki tones.

This is probably one of my favorite outfits of the movie. It looks so beautiful, even when it is composed by so many layers and it doesn't have any vibrant colors, I still find it very attractive. Its weird to say, but it looks very cozy and heart warming.