Joker: Folie à Deux costume designer Arianne Phillips says she wasn’t initially on board with Lady Gaga’s intense desire to pay homage to the original animated version of Harley Quinn with her costume. But Gaga won her over.

“I have to hand it to Stefani, because she really wanted to homage the original animated kind of Harlequin character of Harley Quinn, and it’s in the name, right? And so I was a bit resistant, to be honest,” Phillips said in a Q&A following a screening of Joker: Folie à Deux at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival in Savannah, Georgia on Tuesday. (Stefani Germanotta is Lady Gaga’s real name).

“I can’t speak for [director] Todd [Phillips]. But you know, Todd is very clear that this — with the first film it’s obvious — it’s kind of an alternate, it’s not really the DC Universe in the way that we know other DC films. There’s a gritty reality to it, and there’s that gravitas of reality. But Stefani was persistent, and I think she just broke me down over time and in a positive way,” she adds.

Phillips also explained how both Joker and Gaga’s Harley “Lee” Quinzel characters were rooted in reality.

“Arthur’s Joker suit is rooted in the fact, in the first movie, that he works as a clown. So there was a reality to how the Joker suit in that movie became this Joker persona, but it was rooted in a practical world. So I felt that the onus was on me to figure out a back story or reality for where she would end up at the end as Harley Quinn,” she says.

Main Image: Arianne Phillips at SCAD, Getty Images for SCAD Savannah Film Festival – Credit: C/O

“So my idea, because the film was set a couple years later than the last one, like ’82, was that she was —punk rock was emerging. There’s a club on the Bowery in the Lower East Side called CBGBs where the Ramones and all these really great punk bands started. And she is this sassy sycophant. You know, she’s like an obsessed fan.”

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More About Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux

Phillips drew on the idea of thrifted and found materials for Gaga’s Lee, imaging how the character might have fashioned her own looks.

“I figured she would have cobbled together bits and pieces to kind of create her persona from thrift stores. So the idea, the first thing I started with, was the idea that she had ripped out the diamond corset at the end, that that is actually made for muslin, like it would have been an underpinning in a Halloween costume, basically, or that she found at a thrift store,” she says.

“Then I found those diamond tights. But really great tights are impossible to make. You really have to manufacture them in certain ways, certain machines. But so those diamond tights, that kind of was a balance. And then the red jacket, there’s a technique where you can pleat shapes in fabric. And one of my great team members who works in fabric said, ‘Oh, we can probably pleat diamond pattern into this red silk fabric.’”

Ultimately, the color palette of the film was influenced by the original animated series, but Joker: Folie à Deux remains its own distinct adaptation.

“”It took a little time for me to ground it in reality,” Phillips says.

“Stephanie is really excited about this kind of Harley Quinn origin story through Todd’s vision of Harley Quinn, unlike the Harley Quinn we know from the comic, the animated series, which came out in the ’90s, and then, of course, Birds of Prey and Margot Robbie’s version.”

Main Image: Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel in Joker: Folie à Deux, Warner Bros.