Her approach is reminiscent of the alchemy that American fashion designer Dapper Dan performed at his eponymous boutique in the 1980s.
Montel needed something shiny, something that could gleam sans color, so she had to do it herself, rendering the outfit in a beige bordering on gold.
For example, Saïd's Sergio Tacchini kit wasn't entirely legitimate-they made it just for the movie because a white one was too white and a blue registered too dark. She also says that while La Haine is black and white, it was shot in color, meaning she had to figure out how certain hues and textures would translate. She planted a custom Swoosh on the back of Vinz's jacket, one that isn't there on the retail version, to include the logo in a subtle way. Montel also got gear from Nike and Lacoste, modifying some pieces to fit the needs of the movie. "Not like, 'You want 100 pair? OK, we will have 100 pair.'" "People were happy to give us some stuff, but small stuff," she says. Virginie Montel, the costume designer responsible for the characters' looks, recalls working with Reebok's press office to get the shoes then. The partnership rekindles the relationship between the movie and the sportswear company, which provided sneakers during the production in 1994. In his acidic tone, he insists that the whole streetwear culture is bullshit. "I'm from an era where streetwear didn't exist," he says. The word for this kind of clothing today is "streetwear," but Kassovitz is adamant about the distinction. Like any story successfully capturing urban life in that period, it is intentional in its use of sportswear.
Its depiction of their pain became a national conversation: France's prime minister in 1995 mandated a screening for his cabinet. They are in constant discord-contemplating retaliation against police who hospitalized a friend during an interrogation, getting kicked out of an art gallery, tussling with plainclothes officers. The movie follows three young men, one Arab, one Black, one Jewish, falling together through the streets of Paris. The cow, the suffocating threat of police brutality, and the scream of the streets are among the enduring elements of La Haine, the 1995 masterpiece of French cinema from writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz. It exists in a groggy memory possibly influenced by hash smoke, and then only for a few seconds, but it exists. Here in turbulent Paris, right around the corner from the riots, beyond charred car skeletons and the reach of police batons, there is a cow.