In ‘Verity’, the clothes work harder than the actors or the plot

A few days before the release of Verity, the Michael Showalter-directed film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel of the same name, Amazon MGM Studios dropped a sneak peek into Verity Crawford’s closet with costume designer Jacqueline Demeterio and Anne Hathaway, who, in addition to playing the titular character, is a producer on the film.

The featurette included a delicious chocolate-brown fur coat that Verity wears with oval Saint Laurent sunglasses while outdoors in a wheelchair, the red Guest in Residence cashmere sweater that she uses to “access her villain self” while writing, a vintage white nightgown, and the showstopper: a red Versace dress she wears the night she first meets her husband, Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett).

Walking into the theatre, I didn’t have any expectations, because the last Colleen Hoover novel adaptation, It Ends with Us, ended up being rather tedious to sit through. However, even though the performances are mostly meh, I found Verity to be a lot more easily digestible in comparison, partly thanks to its fabulous costumes.

The story follows Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling author in New York City, who is tasked with ghost-writing and completing Verity’s unfinished book series after a grave accident has reportedly rendered her incapacitated. In order to do so properly, Jeremy invites Lowen to stay at their home in Vermont, where Verity’s notes are, and where Lowen unearths (or at least tries to unearth) a slew of dark secrets pertaining to the family.

Put together by Demeterio, who has previously worked with Hathaway on The Idea of You (2024), WeCrashed (2022), and The Intern (2015), the movie’s wardrobe has several covetable pieces.

In the flashback scenes from Verity’s very successful career as a bestselling author, she is, of course, dressed in a series of glamorous, sophisticated looks, including an asymmetric khaki and black Bottega Veneta dress, a slinky olive mock-neck number from Phoebe Philo, and a monochrome red dress she wears to her Hot Ones interview—all complemented by an equally fabulous shoe wardrobe, which includes pairs from Alaïa, Manolo Blahnik, and Gianvito Rossi, among others.

But even outside of the flashbacks, her current-day wardrobe is delectable. For instance, when we’re first introduced to Verity following her accident, she’s dressed in an ivory silk Toteme pyjama set. In another scene, she wears the gorgeous fur coat with Saint Laurent sunglasses mentioned earlier. For much of the movie, Hathaway is motionless and emotionless, given her character’s condition.

Lowen, on the other hand, may be a strapped-for-cash author but is no slob herself, even though Demeterio told People, “She’s supposed to look pretty pitiful.” In one of the early scenes where Lowen witnesses an accident while crossing the street and is splattered with blood, she’s dressed in a double-breasted cashmere coat from Theory, corduroy pants from ALC, and The Row Nobilis boots (shoutout to @dakotajohnsoncloset on Instagram for ID-ing the look). In the same interview, the costume designer revealed that Lowen’s look was meant to be “Brooklyn edgy” and the items in her wardrobe could have been thrifted and likely didn’t cost a lot. While her wardrobe may not seem pitiful, Johnson’s performance in the film certainly is. Other than biting her lip intermittently and having her “resting bored face” on (one that rivals Kristen Stewart’s in the Twilight series), there’s little about her performance that convinces us of her character’s traits, motivations or personality.

After accepting the job offer, Lowen pulls up to the Crawfords’ house in rural Vermont in a sumptuous black leather jacket, sunglasses (possibly from an affordable luxury eyewear brand), and blue jeans. Later in the movie, while digging through Verity’s office and piecing together her notes, she’s seen in a series of elevated, cosy knits—a grey argyle cardigan, a sweater vest layered over a white tee—almost always with her gold-tone mini medallion and T-bar necklaces.

The red Versace dress Verity wears when she first met Jeremy, though, is the pièce de résistance. An asymmetric evening gown with Medusa ’95 hardware on one shoulder strap and draped fabric along the opposite side, it makes Verity look phenomenal. (Psst, it’s available on the Versace website for ₹5,31,200 should you be tempted enough to buy it.) But it’s not the only red Versace dress in the movie worth mentioning.

To celebrate Lowen’s birthday, Jeremy suggests the two of them go out to the “best Bavarian restaurant” in town and tells her to pick something from his catatonic wife’s closet. “Verity has lots of fancy clothes if you want to borrow something from her closet,” he says. Lowen finds a red bodycon ribbed knit Versace dress with Medusa safety-pin embellishments on the straps. As expected, they have a great time at dinner, where Jeremy tells her that her writing matters to him (*eyeroll*). “I did like the connection of having both the Versace dresses talk to each other. It was something that didn’t seem so out of [Lowen’s] world. She still would grab something like that as opposed to something more extravagant,” DeMeterio said.

Jeremy and Lowen don’t seem to have an ounce chemistry, but I guess a red dress just gets him going like a matador’s muleta does for a bull. To nobody’s surprise, they end up sleeping together after returning home from dinner, and in a rather tepid sex scene Lowen does exactly what Verity does: gnaw on the wooden headboard in the exact same spot. I won’t spoil the movie further should you decide to watch it (there’s a lot of bizarre things happening), but by the end of the 1-hour-57-minute-long movie that promised psychosexual games, obsession, and murder, I was far more invested in the clothes than the plot or the man Verity and Lowen are meant to be losing their minds over. At the end, the question that remained for me was not which version of Verity’s truths was true but if Lowen kept her wardrobe or tossed it all out.