How The Invite’s Costumes Reveal the Cracks Between Two Couples

The Invite depicts the most uncomfortable, tense, and strangely sexy dinner party you’ve ever attended. Directed by Olivia Wilde, the A24 film—which takes place over the course of one evening in the confines of one apartment—follows a desperately unhappy married couple, Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Wilde), as they host their hip upstairs neighbors Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz) for an evening of charcuterie and soufflé. The twist? They’ve been overhearing their neighbors’ sex noises for weeks. Joe wants to confront them, while Angela wants to endear them. Almost immediately, things go awry.

For costume designer Arianne Phillips, finding the right outfits for the hyper-contained story—which unfolds much like a four-person play—was no small feat. “Everyone has basically one outfit,” she tells W. “That presents a whole different challenge, because the job of costumes is to illustrate the character and give story clues to the audience.” Still, the pieces that made it into the final cut reveal much about its four leads—from Joe’s schleppy layers to Piña’s metaphorical rings.

The apartment is its own character.

Joe and Angela’s sprawling pre-war San Francisco residence is a reigning plot point and aesthetic centerpiece. It’s huge, intricately adorned, and freshly remodeled. “You guys have money?” Hawk bluntly asks upon entering. Not quite. Joe was raised there, and he inherited the home from his parents. To him and Angela, it evokes opposing emotions. For Angela, an artist-turned-stay-at-home mom, the space is a source of pride and autonomy. Instead of pursuing her passion for photography, she spends her days meticulously decorating. “She's not really practicing art, so her creative outlet is remodeling this apartment,” says Phillips. But for Joe, a failed musician who now teaches a high school jazz band, it’s a point of shame. “He’s not satisfied in his career, and he doesn't want people to know that he's still living in the apartment he grew up in.”

Phillips worked closely with Wilde and production designer Jade Healy to craft a dialogue between the setting and the clothes. At her dinner party, Angela wears a mint green blouse that matches the paint on the walls. At times, she even blends into them. “I really wanted her to look like she was an extension of the apartment, and kind of losing her personality in it,” explains Phillips. Many shots are done through windows, mirrors and framed doorways—emphasizing the emotional distance between Joe and Angela.

Tellingly, the bedroom—a place of intimacy for a happy couple—is the only room that Angela has yet to decorate. (She’s waiting for Joe to choose between three paint swatches; he says they all look the same.) While the rest of the apartment is well-considered and emblematic of Angela’s effort, the bedroom feels barren. Before their neighbors arrive, an arguing Joe and Angela change in their room while tossing around a pile of unfolded laundry. The scene is frantic and tense—serving as a microcosm of their relationship. They’re getting undressed in front of one another, but there’s no desire in the air. It’s as if they don’t see each other at all.

Joe and Angela are clashing.

Angela’s detailed home decor reflects her style. Just like she sourced her rare living-room rug second-hand, she often shops vintage for clothes—including the striped blouse she wears briefly at the top of the film. While cleaning, she lifts her arm to discover a rip under her armpit. “That happened on camera—that was a real vintage shirt, and Wilde just improvised,” Phillips says. Angela has an old-and-new eccentricity that was modeled in part after Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. For instance, she wears a 1970s-era Hermès Médor watch from Phillips’s personal collection, and her earrings are mismatched, courtesy of Irish jeweler Gráinne Morton. She wants to impress her mysterious neighbors, so there’s an air of polished presentation to her outfit. Joe, on the other hand, puts very little thought into fashion. “I don't think he cares about many things in his life; he's kind of numb,” Phillips says, adding that she imagined Angela bought his clothes for him. He dresses for comfort and ease, not self-expression.

Their dinner-party outfits capture their incompatibility. Angela changes a few times before settling on a polished ruffled button-up blouse with a sharp collar, and Joe just throws on a white tee and a rumpled denim shirt. Angela’s top is mint green, whereas Joe’s is a faded light blue. Together, they look tonally wrong. “That was a really challenging decision for me, because normally, when I'm designing a film, I make sure that the actors are not clashing,” says Phillips. “But I thought in that case, it was a subtle difference that really helped.”

Hawk and Piña, meanwhile, are in sync.

Unlike their downstairs neighbors, whose dysfunctional dynamic is introduced right away, Hawk and Piña are alluringly enigmatic. “I wanted them to be darker and less detailed, with simpler silhouettes,” she says. “I didn't want the audience to have any preconceptions about them.” As they cuddle in dark tops and denim, they are the image of chemistry and cohesion.

Piña, a perceptive sexologist with a vaping habit, has layers that literally unfold with the story. She takes note of everything, her gaze lingering on Joe and Angela as they bicker. When we meet her, she wears a brown suede jacket and a red scarf. Throughout the night, she sheds her outerwear to reveal a black blouse and matching bustier. “The thing about Penélope [Cruz] that strikes me is she naturally has such a sensuality to her,” says Phillips, adding that part of Cruz’s charm is the way she speaks with her hands. To emphasize this expressiveness, Phillips put her in a lot of rings. One of them is a bulbous pearl that rests on her index finger, designed by independent Los Angeles jeweler Hillary Heydle. “The pearl is kind of representative of ultimate femininity,” Phillips says, noting the inherent sexuality surrounding the imagery of the oyster.

For Hawk, the focus was on minimalism and attention to physique. He is a former fireman who once struggled to find meaning in life, but has turned a new leaf since meeting Piña. Now, he’s on a journey of self-discovery in his sex life. He’s wearing Levi’s jeans—a timeless staple—with a navy sweater and a ring featuring a fireman insignia. He also sports a beaded bracelet by Joseph Brooks that nods to his open-hearted energy. “It has a feminine, fashionable quality that maybe you wouldn't expect from an ex-fire captain,” says Phillips. Ultimately, it shows that Hawk is comfortable expressing himself, especially in contrast to Joe.

There’s an immediate power imbalance between the couples.

Angela has a strict no-shoes-in-the-house rule that we see her annoyedly remind Joe about when he walks in from work. But for Piña and Hawk, whom she wants to impress, she feigns easygoing indifference. To illustrate this, Wilde thought it would be funny if Piña and Hawk did not remove their footwear.

“Have you ever been to someone's house where you take your shoes off and you're like, ‘Shit, I'm wearing dirty socks,’ or, ‘My socks have holes,’ or something? There is a vulnerability to that,” says Phillips. She put Piña in vintage Chloé boots and Hawk in dark lace-up boots, bolstering their stature and adding strength to their silhouette. Their hosts’ feet, however, are left exposed. “Angela is barefoot, and Joe is wearing pink socks,” says Phillips. “It sets up the dynamic physically [in a way] that I thought was hilarious and true.”