If Dua Lipa is looking for a title for her next album, she could do a lot worse than Pump It Up.
The Substance costume designer Emmanuelle Youchnovski revealed in an interview with Next Best Picture that one of Margaret Qualley’s outfits as Sue in the Golden Globe-nominated body horror masterpiece was inspired by the “Houdini” singer, as well as Beyoncé.
“I took… you know the video clip of Beyoncé’s ‘Blow,’ where she had the colors, you remember this one? And I also took a lot of inspiration from Dua Lipa because she wears a lot of bodysuits, but the bodysuit, it’s metallic, it’s fuchsia, it’s neon. I took all the things of our pop culture, not ’80s culture,” she said before describing Sue’s bodysuit as “more skin, more Dua Lipa.”
Previously, Qualley shared that she listened to a lot of another pop star to get into character as Sue. “It’s kind of wild timing the way that the universe works because we all just had the ‘Brat Summer,’ right? With Charli XCX. And I was listening to Charli as my ‘Sue’ inspo. Because she has like a lot of good kind of like ‘pump it up’ girl songs,” she told Brut. “I got that kind of Sue energy from Charli’s old music.”
The Substance is streaming now on Mubi.