Courtesy 20th Century Fox
We’ll cut to the chase: Reese Witherspoon looks smokin’ hot in her new film, This Means War. Playing a professional caught between two debonair guys, she wears lots of sexy date looks — and at one point, even strips down.
“Getting sexier was a very clear idea that all of us — myself, [director] McG and Reese — had from the beginning,” costume designer Sophie De Rakoff tells PEOPLE. “This was the movie to push it a little further.”
De Rakoff, who’s worked with Witherspoon on six films (including Legally Blonde), says that creating a perfect wardrobe for the star was tough at times. “The thought was, what is the balance between someone who has a high-profile, serious job, and a woman who is out there, single in the dating world,” she muses. “We had to meld those two worlds together without making her look schizophrenic.”
The designer says the date looks were especially fun to create; an Hervé Léger dress paired with a jacket from The Row tops her list of favorites. “The dates are so varied — you’ve got a nightclub, paintball, a carnival — so it was an opportunity to do fun outfits for each circumstance,” she explains.
And to make Witherspoon appear as that girl next door, De Rakoff mixed lots of high-end pieces with more affordable fashions. “We used Dolce & Gabbana, J Brand, Prada, Theory, Burberry, Miu Miu, J. Crew, Opening Ceremony,” she says. “It ran the whole gamut.”
It’s not just about the leading lady, though: De Rakoff enjoyed dressing Chris Pine (“He basically wears Ralph Lauren the whole movie,” she says), Tom Hardy (“He’s a rougher version of Chris’s character”) and Chelsea Handler, too. “Chelsea looks like Chelsea,” she says, “but I think that it works because it makes her look more real — and allows her humor to shine though.”
Catch This Means War in theaters Friday.
–Kate Hogan
SEE MORE ON-SET STYLE IN ‘LIGHTS! CAMERA! FASHION!’
