How Blood-Red Versace Dresses, "Protective" Sweaters, and Sultry Robes Bring the 'Verity' Villains to Life

Verity, the Amazon MGM Studios adaptation of Colleen Hoover's popular psychological thriller, became a fashion film the moment that Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson joined the cast as Verity and Lowen, respectively. Costume designer Jacqueline Demeterio used that to her advantage.

Verity marked Demeterio's fourth project with Hathaway; they first connected on 2015's The Intern, where she dressed the Oscar winner in preppy, made-for-Manhattan workwear. "We work really well together, and we really just wanted to make [Hathaway's character] Verity perfect...she trusts me, and I trust her," she tells Marie Claire. "We always feel like we really nail it, and again, I felt like that with her on this."

Demeterio and Johnson hadn't collaborated before, but the first fitting went well, "and it's really nice when that happens," she adds. Josh Hartnett, who plays Verity's husband, Jeremy Crawford, even "came in with a lot of different ideas," which Demeterio narrowed down to quiet "Elder Statesmen" elegance. "I always wanted to make him this grounded dad living in Vermont with [a little bit of] wealth, [as proven by his] sweaters from Elder Statesmen," she says.

She said it made a big difference to work with actors committed to pre-filming prep. "You don't want [to collaborate with] someone that's disinterested or someone that has a completely different vision," she says. "You don't want an actor going on camera feeling uncomfortable because then, they're just thinking about what they're wearing, and that can mess with what they're trying to portray with the character."

Unlike the book, the movie begins with Verity in a beige Louis Vuitton sweater, giving an interview to Gayle King. "When I saw the movie, I was surprised [to see] that [scene] opened it, [but it] was this really strong opening," Demeterio says. "High-end sophistication" inspired all of Verity's interview looks, but "the colors and fabrics" in her office, where the King interview took place, had an especially strong influence on her author-at-work uniform.

"Annie and I collaborated on her writing looks, so we had her in a lot of high-end knitwear," she adds. "An old [Fall] 2020 runway collection [from] Missoni was an inspiration for me because we decided to do this sort of Joan Didion feeling of when she was writing in her office." Vintage Proenza Schouler and Paco Rabanne made it on her mood board, too, giving Verity's knitwear a "1970s feel that felt right because it felt luxurious, but also real to her," she says.

Lowen's first scene also features neutrals, as she heads to a meeting of her own in a taupe cashmere coat from Theory, burnt orange corduroy bottoms by A.L.C., and black The Row boots. From the start, the costumes establish a link between the two characters: Both are authors of psychological thrillers, though the former is famous and the latter is undiscovered. Demeterio also points to the visual upside of dressing Lowen in light colors in a scene that sees a car accidentally splattering blood all over her: "to be able to showcase the blood [better]."

While the audience first sees Verity in a slew of straightforward hues, red is the character's signature color. "Annie and I both liked to incorporate the red whenever we could," Demeterio says, referencing a tomato-colored cardigan (courtesy of Gigi Hadid's Guest in Residence), striped raspberry sweaters, and bold red lips. "We felt like it was such a strong color for her, not only visually, but red does tell a lot of stories; it's confident, it's villainous, I think it's one of the strongest colors you have that makes a statement," she adds.

In one of the throwback scenes, a red Versace gown, with asymmetrical straps and delicate ruched drapery, makes Verity the center of attention in a crowded bar, drawing Jeremy to his soon-to-be wife. Later in the film, Lowen (who is ghostwriting a new novel for an incapacitated Verity at her home) finds an almost identical Versace dress in her host's closet. For Demeterio, the little red dresses needed to be distinct, but similar enough to make audiences (and Jeremy) think, "Whoa, Lowen looks like Verity."

She went back and forth on whether Verity and Lowen should wear the same Versace style: "It was believable that Versace was one of the designers that [Verity] had in her closet, but it wasn't too believable that she would hold on to that [date-night] dress for so long," she says. "Even though Lowen is turning into Verity, I wanted whatever her version of Verity was to still have some sense of who Lowen was." Demeterio was also drawn to the "second skin" nature of Lowen's ribbed Versace look, "because it wasn't this dress that you had to corset yourself into."

The dress's sweater-style ribbing also channeled Lowen's more relaxed, archetypal author look. "When she arrives at the house, she starts out very layered and very guarded with her sweaters and her knits; at one time I even had two sweaters on her because it was her protective layer," Demeterio says.

For her first outfit in Verity's house, "I wanted her to [leather jacket to] look very 'city' coming into this Vermont atmosphere." Even black Prada sunglasses—which stayed on inside—added to the out-of-towner feel. "As you see Lowen going through Verity's manuscript and all of her research, I wanted her [looks] to be a little bit more stripped down," she adds. She holes up in Verity's office, switching one sweater-and-jeans outfit for another. Much like Johnson's off-duty denim, Lowen sticks to straight-leg Levi's styles, which make even her preppiest knit (an argyle sweater) more wearable.

One of Verity's biggest plot twists comes in the form of a hauntingly white robe, which "had to look beautiful on both girls," Demeterio says. Both women wear the getting-ready go-to during intimate scenes with Jeremy, but later in the film, it reappears in a more haunting lake moment.

"Cinematically, I wanted there to be a visual flow of that fabric moving in the water," she adds. After a camera test, she liked the "shine of the silk charmeuse, the sheen when it caught the light." Demeterio and her design team sculpted this specific style for the film, inspired by an Agent Provocateur robe. "What I liked about it is it had almost an Old Hollywood, movie star quality to it," she adds. "It was feminine because it showed off their bodies really beautifully, which is hard to do in a robe."

At one point, Demeterio considered adding a statement chiffon sleeve, but then, it "became too costumey." Instead, her tailor stitched "some extra gussets so that you would really see the movement of it [in the water]."

After several twists and turns, the film ends on an inconclusive note, making audiences wonder who the actual villain is. Similarly, Demetrio didn't want the wardrobe to spoil the storyline: "I didn't want anything to look too sinister or too extreme."

Neither Lowen, Verity, nor Jeremy looks like the Verity villain, but beneath the top-tier sweaters, the blood-red Versace dresses, and the woodsy dad wardrobe, everyone plays a part in the twisted plot. The on-screen style is an accomplice in the crime.