Netflix’s new ‘The Gentlemen’: how LouLou Bontemps reinvented quintessential Britishness

Open­ing image: Getty

Words Leelou Reboh

Cos­tume design­er and styl­ist LouLou Bon­temps dis­cuss­es mix­ing bespoke and vin­tage in ‘The Gen­tle­men’, and cre­at­ing the right wardrobe for the many ‘out­ra­geous, won­der­ful char­ac­ters’ of the series.

Ever­more depict­ing quin­tes­sen­tial British­ness through his lens, Guy Ritchie’s lat­est ‘The Gen­tle­men’, a lim­it­ed Net­flix series spin-off of his 2019 film, jug­gles chaos and fash­ion­able deca­dence. Fol­low­ing the jour­ney of Eddie (Theo James) as he nav­i­gates his new­ly-inher­it­ed duke­dom, the hum­ble sol­dier-turned-aris­to­crat soon comes to realise that his late father had resort­ed to dubi­ous arrange­ments to fund the fam­i­ly estate. Torn between moral­i­ty and duty, Eddie embarks on a wild ride along­side the charis­mat­ic Susie Glass (Kaya Scode­lario) at the helm of her father’s drug empire. 

‘The Gen­tle­men’ is a tale of styl­ish­ly flawed char­ac­ters with no short­age of extrav­a­gance, punc­tu­at­ed by mem­o­rable lines and eccen­tric cos­tumes designed by LouLou Bon­temps. Twist­ing the codes of British dress­ing to cre­ate metic­u­lous­ly curat­ed wardrobes, each lay­er allows us to delve into the com­plex idio­syn­crasies of the char­ac­ter­is­tic per­sonas we dis­cov­er through­out each episode.

In con­ver­sa­tion with OVERDUE, LouLou Bon­temps reflects on her process of por­tray­ing British style through Ritchie’s eyes, sourc­ing out­ra­geous­ly expen­sive hand­bags, and the secret to emu­lat­ing fashion’s favourite ‘old mon­ey’ look.

You’ve worked with Guy Ritchie before ‘The Gen­tle­men’. What made the series dif­fer­ent from the oth­er projects?

The series was dif­fer­ent because he’d already done the film ‘The Gen­tle­men’, and I did­n’t design the cos­tumes for that one. I joined his team after. It was an inter­est­ing chal­lenge to recre­ate it in a com­plete­ly new way and pay homage to the film, but at the same time cre­ate some­thing com­plete­ly unique to the series. It’s Guy’s baby, you know. ‘The Gen­tle­men’ real­ly is his world, his cre­ation. It was super impor­tant to make sure that I cre­at­ed looks that were not only true not just the world we see but how he sees it through his eyes. 

How did you approach think­ing and see­ing the world like him?

Through con­ver­sa­tions with him. I would get the script and do some research on what I believed the char­ac­ters to be and the way in which they dress. Then, I would have a meet­ing with Guy and present my ideas. From that, we’d talk about who this per­son is. With Guy, every­thing is always stylised and height­ened, but he is always deter­mined that it be believ­able. As there were so many out­ra­geous, won­der­ful char­ac­ters in ‘The Gen­tle­men’, it was real­ly impor­tant that it was all very true to how some­body like that would actu­al­ly dress. We would just talk so much about peo­ple, whether they’re famous or just peo­ple you might have seen in a pub, peo­ple that he knows, peo­ple that I know, and take it from there to cre­ate the right wardrobe for the characters.

What’s your design process like?

I usu­al­ly start with lots and lots of books. I’ve also got my own archive of old pic­tures that I love and I’ve col­lect­ed over the years, and then I will start afresh with things that are new. Depend­ing on the char­ac­ter, I’ll want to fol­low fash­ion or be ahead of it. Some­times, it’ll be about cre­at­ing or repli­cat­ing some­thing or a par­tic­u­lar per­son that I might have already seen before, and then height­en­ing it and styl­is­ing it.

You talked to GQ about the watch­es of the show, amount­ing to more than £6M. How impor­tant are acces­sories in your work?

Acces­sories are real­ly impor­tant because they’re always the final touch, and it’s an inter­est­ing moment with the actors to get them more involved in the styling con­ver­sa­tion. There’s a whole scene about watch­es in ‘The Gen­tle­men’, so they were obvi­ous­ly major to the plot. You can tell a lot about a per­son accord­ing to their acces­sories, espe­cial­ly in the world of watch­es. You real­ly become part of a club when you start buy­ing and col­lect­ing them. There are dif­fer­ent leagues — I mean, the cost of some of these watch­es is more than peo­ple would spend on their homes! It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing and incred­i­ble trade. Any kind of acces­sories — it could be shoes, hand­bags, ear­rings, a neck­lace, or a ring — is real­ly an impor­tant final touch, because looks seem unfin­ished with­out them.

Besides watch­es, which acces­so­ry is your favourite to work with?

I par­tic­u­lar­ly love hand­bags — I’ve got my own tweed Longchamp bag here. I think they speak vol­umes about a char­ac­ter. You can judge a woman by her hand­bag and the amount of jew­ellery that a woman will wear or won’t wear, depend­ing on the occa­sion or what she wears every day. Nobody’s talked too much about the hand­bags in the show, but there are some incred­i­ble ones. Guy was very adamant that each hand­bag that Susie Glass wore was out­ra­geous­ly expen­sive and beau­ti­ful. We loaned from pri­vate col­lec­tors a whole bunch of design­er hand­bags. I man­aged to buy some vin­tage. It was real­ly good fun.

Which one of Susie’s bags was your favourite?

That was this design­er vin­tage Moschi­no lit­tle leather yel­low bag that was actu­al­ly from my col­lec­tion. It’s beau­ti­ful. She wore that a cou­ple of times because it was unusu­al. For some­body like me who loves hand­bags and real­ly loves the fash­ion his­to­ry of hand­bags, it def­i­nite­ly is a won­der­ful detail that jumps out to them. It’s not your obvi­ous Birkin, but it’s a real­ly stun­ning, well-made collector’s handbag.

Which char­ac­ter imper­son­ates, for you, quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British style the best in the series?

You’ve got two worlds in ‘The Gen­tle­men’: the Hal­st­ed coun­try estate world, which we rep­re­sent­ed by using fan­tas­tic quin­tes­sen­tial British brands like Cord­ings, Clare Hag­gas, Bar­bour, Bel­staff… Then you’ve got some­body like Susie Glass who does­n’t real­ly wear any of those brands. She’s like a cel­e­bra­tion of lux­u­ry and British vin­tage. A lot of her out­fits were bought from Por­to­bel­lo Green Mar­ket, or brought from my own col­lec­tion of vin­tage clothes, bags and shoes, and she’d pair it with these incred­i­ble Ralph Lau­ren pieces. Her char­ac­ter is very much that Lon­don metrop­o­lis style ver­sus the coun­try estate, which I kind of glammed up a bit. We want­ed to cel­e­brate, through the cos­tume design, bring­ing tai­lor­ing, bespoke suits, knitwear, and all of that tweed back to the sur­face again for peo­ple to enjoy it. I brought ele­ments of that into Susie’s wardrobe as well to show that you can still be a trendy Lon­don­er and dress up in a vin­tage cape and match­ing trousers and look absolute­ly fan­tas­tic. It’s fan­tas­tic to see that the response to the mix of dif­fer­ent cul­tures and dif­fer­ent wardrobes has been cel­e­brat­ed and peo­ple are lov­ing it.

What was the most mem­o­rable look that you designed in the series?

Every look was just as impor­tant as all the actors togeth­er in that sce­nario. Not every­one had to look great on their own, but in all these big scenes where they all come togeth­er, they had to look bril­liant as a unit, so to speak. I think my favourite is in episode two where we have the chick­en suit. We have Theo in his Bar­bour, and Kaya in her red vel­vet three-piece. They look beau­ti­ful togeth­er in all of those scenes togeth­er, and absolute­ly fan­tas­tic on their own. It’s essen­tial­ly what’s been used in all the of bill­boards and posters, every­body’s going well for it. 

Was it a chal­lenge to design looks that were so com­ple­men­tary, yet so dif­fer­ent at the same time?

It was a chal­lenge in the sense that it was fun and excit­ing and it real­ly made every­body have to work a lit­tle bit hard­er. I cre­at­ed cap­sule wardrobes for each char­ac­ter, and every actor would have their favourite out­fit, but it was very impor­tant to make sure that I chose the right out­fit for each sce­nario. There’s a love­ly moment with Gian­car­lo Esposito’s wardrobe that I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of where I recre­at­ed a look of Clark Gable when he was shop­ping for watch­es. We real­ly repli­cat­ed that and it was per­fect for the scene where he’s writ­ing invi­ta­tions to his big ball. He looked beau­ti­ful in it and he loved it! There’s a lot of fun in allow­ing the actor to have room to decide what they want to wear and when so it feels like we’ve com­plet­ed the devel­op­ment of their char­ac­ter by putting on these clothes. That’s the won­der­ful thing about cos­tume design: you’re part of a team. You’re work­ing with every­body, from the actor and the direc­tor to the pro­duc­tion design­er and the DP. You make mag­ic hap­pen together.

What details did you pay atten­tion to when it came to illus­trat­ing the dif­fer­ent social class­es of the characters? 

With a lot of the char­ac­ters that are in the coun­try­side, Guy was very pas­sion­ate about the fact that these peo­ple who own these huge estates aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly loaded and that they might be wear­ing the same pair of shoes or trousers that they’ve worn for years. We had to make sure that’s how it looked and felt when these peo­ple were wear­ing their clothes. Most of Freddie’s wardrobe, for exam­ple, was either new that we broke down and made it look old, or vin­tage things. But Gian­car­lo Esposito’s char­ac­ter is prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing in response to your ques­tion, because he’s from the East Coast of Amer­i­ca and he’s real­ly try­ing to break into this quin­tes­sen­tial British lifestyle. His sense of fash­ion and dress, his col­lec­tion of watch­es, and what he gets excit­ed about, like that very expen­sive wine, are extreme con­trasts to that hon­est British world he’s try­ing to buy him­self into. We made that seen through his wardrobe. At the ball, for exam­ple, rather than him wear­ing a tuxe­do, Uncle Stan is wear­ing trues, which are these tweed tar­tan Scot­tish suit trousers, and he’s wear­ing a red vel­vet tuxe­do smok­ing jack­et. What was inter­est­ing about that look is the whole his­to­ry of black tie, and research­ing when peo­ple stopped wear­ing black tie and start­ed wear­ing smok­ing jack­ets. That whole world is exact­ly where Stan­ley John­son is from: it’s this Hol­ly­wood Amer­i­can­ised ver­sion of what is quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British.

What is the secret to mas­ter­ing the old mon­ey look then?

I think the secret to old mon­ey is to make it look like you haven’t inten­tion­al­ly bought or put your look togeth­er. It’s that kind of effort­less thrown-it-on and it’s been in my wardrobe for years kind of thing. The best way is to buy sec­ond-hand rather than a spe­cif­ic brand and to tai­lor it. A lot of peo­ple don’t realise that you can just go to your dry clean­ers and have some tai­lor­ing done… Or you can also learn your­self! It’s an easy way to be smarter and more eco-friend­ly, which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in the world of fashion.

100%. Last­ly, are there any upcom­ing projects you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about, besides the upcom­ing ‘The Min­istry of Ungentle­man­ly War­fare’, that you can tell me about? 

We then went to Tener­ife and shot an amaz­ing film after we did ‘The Min­istry of Ungentle­man­ly War­fare’, again with Hen­ry Cav­ill, Issa Gon­za­lez, and Jake Gyl­len­haal. At the moment, it’s still just the ‘Unti­tled Guy Ritchie Project’. I’m also cur­rent­ly work­ing on a real­ly excit­ing Sky­dance film, which will prob­a­bly come out next year, set in this kind of Indi­ana Jones world. In the mean­time, def­i­nite­ly go and watch ‘The Min­istry of Ungentle­man­ly War­fare’! It’s anoth­er cel­e­bra­tion of British fash­ion, but this time set dur­ing World War II. A lot of the cos­tumes have all been made bespoke. It’s in com­plete con­trast to a con­tem­po­rary wardrobe, but it’s absolute­ly bril­liant and won­der­ful. I’m very proud of it, and I look for­ward to see­ing how peo­ple receive it!

A big thank you to LouLou @maisonbontemps for speak­ing with OVERDUE. Stream ‘The Gen­tle­men’ now on Net­flix, and don’t miss ‘The Min­istry of Ungentle­man­ly War­fare’ com­ing out on Ama­zon Prime lat­er this year!

Source The Gen­tle­men (2024) writ­ten & dir. by Guy Ritchie, exec. prod. by Guy Ritchie, prod. by Mira­max Films, Moon­age Pictures