“The Instigators” is many things. Doug Liman’s movie starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck is a buddy comedy, a heist caper, and a thriller — but it is also a stealth menswear stunner. That might not be entirely surprising, given the internet uproar when the trailer revealed Jack Harlow’s vintage Red Sox jacket.
That was thanks to costume designer Charlese Antoinette’s eye for vintage shopping (both in person and online); the rest of the workwear that fills the Apple TV+ movie was a little harder. “I couldn’t do a lot of thrifting with those guys for the outfits they end up wearing once the whole heist began,” Antoinette told IndieWire about locking Affleck and Damon’s crooks into one look. “That stuff was new, and we had to age it down and make it look beat up and old.
That’s also why I like thrifting, because it gives me inspiration for the aging.” So how does one make not just a new pair of jeans look older, but five pairs of the same jeans look like five different but related stages of distress? Dryers and rocks. “Wet [the jeans] and put them in a dryer with a sand block.
I’ve done that. Sometimes tumbling them with actual rocks in a bag,” Antoinette said. “That also helps.
But it’s not as fast as you ever want. You always need more time with aging. A lot of our aging came down to the wire; we had an ager on for a couple of weeks, we had that much stuff, and she was great, but you always need more time.
” Antoinette described the non-s.