Ana de Armas - Joi - Blade Runner 2049

[johncarbon1991]

Following the recent success of the K thread, I'm starting this thread in the hopes of identifying Ana de Armas' wardrobe in Blade Runner 2049, specifically her yellow raincoat attire.

So far it seems like there are a couple of unofficial replicas of her translucent yellow jacket floating around on etsy and ebay, and I believe I've successfully identified the exact boots they modified for the film. I have a pair in the mail arriving for my significant other Monday. If they look as correct in person as they do in photos, obviously I'll provide the source, and assuming the modification goes well, I'll post a build guide here.

Where I'm currently struggling is identifying her skirt. I'm not sure whether it's pleather, leather, or vinyl, and whether it was an off the rack piece like much of K's fashion or whether they cut and stitched an interestingly textured fabric. It looks like an embossed houndstooth pattern but Google searches turn up nothing. Hoping this community can help.

 

[joberg]

^^
That skirt fabric might be something you'll use to upholster furniture

 

[Cameron1138]

It doesn't really look like houndstooth to me, but I agree with joberg, look up pleather upholstery fabric.

 

[smithjohnj]

I believe Joi's skirt has a pattern more properly called “windmill”. It is made up of four rectangles (each twice as long as they are wide) which are offset and perpendicular to each other. The pattern continues out from a common point in all four compass directions. Normally the pattern is like a checkerboard where windmills which touch at the corner are one color and the alternating mills a contracting color. However with Joi's skirt instead of alternating color, there is an alternating “texture”. All windmills are black, but one set is either embossed or stitched flat. You can see dimples of embossing or stitch lines which occur in each flat piece which follow the edges of the rectangles. The alternating mills are puffed up or raised. Also these raised mills are stitched in a manner which provides the texture but also breaks up the windmill silhouette.


Most of the images I used in my analysis come from a costume display. There are a couple of issues. First the skirt is largely covered by the raincoat which distorts the view. The skirt also has a waistline zipper going down the center front. This also breaks the skirt pattern. In addition I wonder if the skirt was put on the mannequin backwards? A zipper of this type is normally in the center back, unless the designer was going for additional texture. I did not have access to high-res film images to verify the design one way or the other.


I am attaching the best image of the skirt detail I could find. I would welcome any better ones to help refine my guesses. I am also attaching my best approximation of the pattern. I started with an 8x8 grid, filled in the flat (black) windmills and then added the alternating (gray) stitched mills matching the images as best I could. I welcome any alternate thoughts on the pattern.

 

[joberg]

You're right about the zipper. In the scene where Joy is "eliminated", you can see clearly that there's no zipper at the front.

 

[johncarbon1991]

Ok, delivering as promised. The boots Joi wears in the film look like a modified version of Demonia's Bolt 425 boot. These are technically a man's boot, and as such come in men's sizing, but there's a size conversion chart on their website which helps. Demonia sells these directly, but you can also find them on clearance at goth shops (hot topic, vampire freaks, etc). The leather straps were modified and replaced with what look like custom pvc straps, likely out of a similar material to Joi's jacket. I bought my SO a pair, and she claims they're immensely uncomfortable, enough so that walking at a con would quickly prove painful, so we may end up returning them. I was able to identify them by the buckles. If you zoom in on the mannequins boots from the blade runner 2049 exhibit you can even make out the embossed Demonia text. If you were looking for a cheaper alternative option I imagine the buckles could be recast in aluminum, but given that the actual boots retail for about 100usd, I doubt it'd save you that much. Might be worth it if you wanted to swap the buckles to a more comfortable lookalike boot though.