How the looks in Olivia Wilde's Don't Worry Darling reveal the movie's sinister undertones

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Don't Worry Darling.

Everything may seem gorgeous and perfect in Don't Worry Darling's fictional town of Victory, but there are certain things that were intentionally left off-kilter, according to the movie's visual team. To create the eerie, highly stylized world (inhabited by stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine and Gemma Chan), director Olivia Wilde worked closely with costume designer Arianne Phillips (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and production designer Katie Byron (C'mon C'mon).

"This movie is about breaking down structures of belief — it's about pushing yourself beyond comfort and safety to expose realities," says Byron, who went to Palm Springs in August 2020 and stayed at the Frank Sinatra House with Wilde and screenwriter Katie Silberman to collaborate on the look of the film. "The viewers, along with [Pugh's character] Alice, are plagued with this anxiety about whether or not we are happy in this space."

Adds Phillips, "I hope that people will see the movie more than once because once you understand how the story unfolds going back, there are all kinds of clues, not only in the costume design, but in the production design, that lead and underscore the tone of where this film is going."

Here are some of the hidden meanings behind Darling's midcentury modern sheen.

LUXE LIFE The cul-de-sac on which Alice and Jack (Styles) live was shot in Palm Springs' Canyon View Estates, a picture-perfect community built in 1956. "There were two ways to imagine Don't Worry Darling," says Byron. "There was this utopic version that we see of the 1950s through magazines and advertisements, where everything is perfect. And then there's this side of the '50s, especially in Palm Springs at the time, where it was a playground for artists, creatives, actors, architects. It was much more liberated in terms of all kinds of hedonistic ways of life. So one of our philosophical ideas was that this world needed to be luxurious and opulent, and also debaucherous."

YOU DON'T KNOW JACK "I really put my male-gaze hat on for this," says Phillips. "It's not only how men idealize women, but also how they see themselves. The way that Jack chooses to dress really leaned into that Rat Pack early-'60s bro culture, in terms of that flawless suit and the leisure wear and that whole archetype. This is really about gender roles and about a time when there were these societal expectations. So that idea of the perfect wife, mother, lover, who has to be all things. But the same thinking is how Jack presents himself, and how all the men present themselves, as their most virile, handsome self."

THE DARK SIDE Alice and Jack's house may be lovely, but there's something precarious about their surroundings. "We wanted this sultry depiction of this life, but also the biggest tip of the hat to this world having a sinister side," says Byron. "I kept on imagining how dangerous a house could be. The stone wall that's in the dining room, and the brick floor in the hallway, and the glass everywhere — it feels like a dangerous space." That extended to the interiors' color palette. "Even though there are pastels in the film," Alice and Jack's home has "smoked glass and colored mirrors, and pops of dark brown and red."

HIGH ANXIETY "I really felt like this world, Victory, is a world of perfection, and that is a facade," says Phillips, who looked to works by artists Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly, and Willem de Kooning for inspiration. To convey that sense of simulation, "there is a heightened sense of the design with the costumes. The colors are definitely more vibrant than they were literally in the early '60s, late '50s. The audience is experiencing Victory in real time with Alice, trying to figure out where we are, what's happening. There's something off."

Adds Byron about the alpha-boss character, Frank (above, played by Chris Pine), "Because this world is one man's account of what the 1950s looked like, we were on the fence about whether or not it made sense to have items that truly were branded in that time period. So most of it is not. Most of it is created. That was kind of the intention. We wanted it to feel like Frank had a real opinion about the design, and that everything in Victory is a choice that he made."

SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME The architecture and decor reflect the characters' emotional state. "We decided to switch the interior of the house to be glass walls," says Byron. "So instead of looking out, you're sort of looking in. There's this idea of surveillance from the neighborhood, but also this idea that surveillance is also a fear about your partner. When things start to get a little strange and she wakes up in bed and sees Jack walking through the hallway to the living room, it's this idea of: Even in that house, there's this tension."

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