News feed
Chainmail and weaponry blend seamlessly into the dystopian world created by Australian director George Miller in his award-winning Mad Max franchise. But these motifs have never felt more at home than on actress Anya Taylor-Joy at the Sydney premiere of the series’ latest instalment, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. (A fitting tribute given Taylor-Joy’s titular character spends the two-and-a-half hour runtime voyaging through the barren wasteland in an attempt to return to her native Green Place of Many Mothers.)
Despite the grey conditions Sydney displayed during the screening, Taylor-Joy took cues from the desert battleground by reimagining her warrior role with theatrical aplomb. In vintage Paco Rabanne from 1996—Taylor-Joy’s birth year—the 28-year-old was the definition of heavy metal and reflective.
The archival piece was rendered in the signature space-age style of the luxuriate, with the mini dress made from the late designer’s trademark chainmail fabric. Serving as sartorial armour, Taylor-Joy coated herself in interlocking gilded triangular and oval diamonté shapes. Yet it was the individually pierced arrows that were the real pièce de résistance. This motif extended to the matching headpiece Taylor-Joy adorned over her platinum blonde locks, too.
Just as this look was a lesson in fashion history, with Taylor-Joy and her stylist Ryan Hastings introducing a new audience of cinephiles and style savants to Rabanne’s Spring/Summer 1996 couture collection, it also served as an exercise in film history. Yes, the look might have embodied the convergence of metal and flesh exhibited throughout Furiosa, but she also paid homage to Fritz Lang’s incredibly influential Germanic expressionist film, Metropolis.
With much of Lang’s 1927 futuristic urban dystopia referenced in Miller’s Mad Max universe, the actress subtly nods to the Art Deco headdress shown in one of the film’s more significant scenes. Similar to how the character Maria, who wears the look in Lang’s work, serves as the heart of this film, Taylor-Joy makes it apparent that Furiosa is the beating centre of the action-adventure.
Taylor-Joy and her co-star Chris Hemsworth will soon travel to the Cannes Film Festival to screen Furiosa as part of the prestigious event’s official programming. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will launch in theatres on May 24. Until then, the cast will continue to tease the biggest film ever shot in Australian history. Watch the trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, here and below.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will launch in Australian theatres on May 24.
