‘I counted all the stripes on the dress,’ shares Pascaline Chavanne. ‘It was scientific, like a historian would do.’ The costume designer is recalling over Zoom the archaeological manner with which she approached Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s new film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic New Wave picture, Breathless (or in French, À bout de souffle).
The frock in question – a typical 1950s style featuring a wide skirt, Peter Pan collar and matching belt – is worn by Jean Seberg’s Patricia throughout the final act of Godard’s film. An anomaly of the production, for which Seberg largely shaped the character’s wardrobe with pieces of her own, the dress was purchased by Godard from Prisunic, a since-shuttered retail store on the Champs-Élysée (we know this because Chavanne found the original invoice in her research for the Linklater project). As the last clothing article on screen in the 1960 film, the dress is not insignificant; its prim collar breaks into the frame of a close-up on Patricia’s face. Her lover, in his own striped shirt, has just been killed, and she stands slowly rubbing her lips with her thumb, a recurring gesture of the dead man, borrowed from Humphrey Bogart.
Still from Nouvelle Vague
Originally inspired by a news story with a subsequent treatment written by François Truffaut, whose own directional debut, The 400 Blows, had premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959, Breathless was to be Godard’s breakout from Cahiers du Cinéma, the cult film magazine where many French auteurs were then employed as critics. This is where we meet the would-be director, played by newcomer Guillaume Marbeck, in Nouvelle Vague – galvanised by Truffaut’s success and winding up producer Georges de Beauregard to let him make a film of his own.
‘I counted all the stripes on the dress. It was scientific, like a historian would do’
Pascaline Chavanne
‘For French people, the New Wave is an obligatory passage,’ continues Chavanne, who was recently nominated for a César for her work on the Linklater film. Indeed, Breathless would remould cinema and launch Godard as a trailblazing filmmaker. Famously a story about girl and a gun – the key elements for any picture, as per Godard’s interpretation of DW Griffith’s concept – Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) was cast as Michel, a car thief on the run after shooting a police officer, while American Seberg (Zoey Deutch) is a young journalist and the object of his affection. Introduced to the film in her teens, Chavanne remembers it as a revelation, and was initially overwhelmed, on hearing about Linklater’s idea, by its legacy. ‘To work on this kind of movie, in France, first you think it's impossible,’ she notes. ‘With an American director, it seemed more possible.’
Still from Nouvelle Vague
Immortalised by on-set photographer Raymond Cauchetier, the film’s sartorial components are similarly influential and continue to be referenced across style and culture today. ‘It seems not so much work – there aren't many costumes in the movie – but to find a good one was very difficult,’ says Chavanne, highlighting the challenges of dressing well known characters. Indeed, Patricia only wears several looks throughout, while Michel’s suit is his uniform. ‘We made the shirt, the tie, we transformed the jacket. We worked on each piece with precision – sometimes it was a question of a millimetre,’ remarks the costume designer. ‘Of course it’s not a real copy, because the actors’ bodies aren't the same. For example, the hat Belmondo wears had specific measurements of the ball and the top of the head, so it was a question about proportion.’
‘I hate when somebody says to me, “Wow, the costume was great”; it's like I missed something or made a mistake'
Pascaline Chavanne
As well making many of the pieces and commissioning others out to artisans in Paris (like the sunglasses Marbeck’s Godard wears near-religiously), Chavanne’s research took her to flea markets, rental houses, and the Chanel archive (in the new film, Seberg wears a second striped dress, for an event, modelled directly after a Chanel piece from the 1950s). For the mood employed on set, meanwhile, the director was keen to mirror the energy of 1959. ‘Richard wanted to keep the légèreté [lightness] and also that naivete, because they’re all new actors,’ shares Chavanne. ‘For me, I gave some outils [tools] to the actors, to work and find their character. It was very important that each sincerely liked their costume, and a lot asked to keep it after.’
Still from Nouvelle Vague
With Deutch’s Seberg, a crucial piece was the top with the Herald Tribune logo that Patricia wears when she meets up with Michel for the first time; paired with simple black trousers, flat pumps and a drawstring bag, it’s one of the picture’s most defining looks. ‘We found the T-shirt on the internet, because the Herald Tribune made it again, a long time ago, but when we received it, we saw that it was absolutely not the same,’ says Chavanne. ‘So we made it ourselves, doing a lot of tests with the different lettering, for example.’
Still from Nouvelle Vague
Despite this kind of care and attention to detail – counting stripes and becoming a specialist of New Wave for the months leading up to the film (‘you have to enter completely inside’) – the costume designer stresses that the work is ultimately well done when no one notices. ‘I hate when somebody says to me, “Wow, the costume was great”; it's like I missed something or made a mistake,’ she clarifies. ‘We need to believe first in this story, so this is the challenge, to find a good equilibrium and to not disturb the story.’
Nouvelle Vague is in UK cinemas from 30 January 2026