Living - Mr Williams' Pin Stripe Suit

There was a time when what one did in London stayed in London, but these days half of the street works in London. – Fiona, Living.

Catch the review on YouTube also (Click image above)

Who made Bill Nighy’s suit in Living?

As mentioned in an interview for Vanity Fair

The suit she (Sandy Powell) found for Williams from the London costume house Angels was from the late ’30s or early ’40s (hence the wider shoulders that Nighy asked his tailor, Martin Nicholls, to bring in). The men were fitted for custom-made bowler hats at Lock & Co. Hatters, an item she couldn’t acquire vintage.

Living Bill Nighy bowler hat lock and co

Living (2022) Image courtesy of IMDB

My thoughts on Living

Living is Fundamentally a film about a man (Mr Williams) who has awoken from a monotonous dream to find death at his door. His place in the world has become an endless loop of bureaucracy his life not worth the stack of paper its buried under. Mr Williams then decides it’s time to have fun. And what screams fun, more than throwing endless dosh into a teddy picker.,

In fact in the week that writer Cormac McCarthy died the film reminded of one of his quotes,

‘Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.’

‘Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.’

I think the notes of Bill’s performance are played quietly and but with tremendous candour.

It’s as almost as if you’d much prefer him to lose his sh8t in the face of his adversities, but then one of the lines and probably the line of the movie that he delivers is when someone asks him how does he manage to not lost lose his temper, he simply replies ‘I don’t have time to get angry‘. Unlike me who has all the time in the world to howl at the moon and anyone that will listen.

Sandy Powell Designs – Image sourced: Vanity Magazine

Costume Designer quotes

Sandy Powell says in an interview with Awards Radar.

“We actually started by trying on many suits. I got many suits over a sort of 10-20 year period, because of the film is set in the early 50s. A man of his (Bill Nighy) age, and his character would not be wearing a brand new suit. He wouldn’t buy a new suit every year. He would have a suit that was 20, even possibly 30 years old (…) If you don’t notice the costumes, if they’re not distracting, then they’re doing their job.”

Quote from Lock & Co:

For Mr. Nighy in Living, we provided him with his bowler hat, and the Fairbanks trilby in the movie poster and in the film. Ben Dalrymple, Managing Director

Rotten Tomatoes: Living

Funniest review on Rotten Tomatoes; “The highlight of this film was when he got a new hat. Truly THE most tedious, dull, painfully vacuous film I’ve ever seen…and I’ve seen a few.”