A Simple Favor Ending: Why Blake Lively's Outfit Changes (& What It Means) - Screen Rant

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In A Simple Favor, Blake Lively's character wears clothes that evoke a specific image of who she is. The jaw-dropping fashion is more than simple wardrobe choices in this black comedy thriller. The character dresses a certain way to project a very specific idea of herself onto other people. At the end of the film, however, she dons a totally different look that is very unexpected, and it's a measured choice by her character to do so.

Throughout the film, the audience is sent through several twists and turns, never really certain of who this character is. It is important, then, that the clothing Emily, a.k.a. Hope, wears gives a sense of her personality in place of a clear arc. The point-of-view character is Stephanie, played by Anna Kendrick, and her perception of Emily paints the film. When the audience is permitted to see Emily outside of Stephanie's field of vision, Emily's suits are set aside for regular clothing, making it seem as though she dresses the way she does to protect and disguise herself. She finds power and purpose in her sartorial choices, and this is clear through the course of the film and especially in the costume-like outfit in the final scene.

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Emily first appears on screen picking up her son from elementary school in a devastating suit and hat, striding in the rain beneath a wide black umbrella. She is mysterious, confident, and assertive, and her clothes say that to the audience before she even opens her mouth. A flimsy pink umbrella blows by across Blake Lively's path, signifying how her more basic and simple peers may be crushed in her wake. This is a person who suffers no fools. In her home, the suit strips down into a vest via the removal of a dickey, leaving her sensually casual. Across from the buttoned-up PTA mom Stephanie, Emily and her suits are bold and potent. Effortless vitality radiates from her, and she chooses each piece to illustrate that she is not someone to be trifled with. In the climactic moment, she mirrors Stephanie's soft floral tones, the alternative aesthetic an imitation or pretense chosen to chaff societal notions of what Emily lacks in her roles as wife and mother.

When Emily wants to exert power over her husband in a flashback scene, she wears a flirty mini-skirt, seducing him and convincing him to let her keep his mother's ring. It is a moment that gives the audience a glimpse into how Emily views overt femininity: as a tool of manipulation. When Emily is dressed down, it is when she wishes to appear vulnerable or earnest, even when she is anything but. She comes to her sister in such a fashion, seeming to want to open up, but it is soon clear that redemption was not the goal. Emily regains her power, sidling up to Stephanie in a white suit reminiscent of an old-world gangster, the reverse image of the day they first met.

In the final scene, Emily appears in a pastel '50s housewife dress, a pink crinoline underlay making her look doll-like and prim. This outfit is a clear mockery of the "perfect little wife," an almost Stepford-like jab aimed both at Stephanie's more traditionally feminine look and Emily's husband, who has been having an affair with Stephanie. With the look, Emily whimsically hints at a more supportive, subservient role, trading in crisp lines for soft curves. It is in this outfit that she reveals her nefarious intentions and performs heinous acts in a satirical send-up of what the world expects of her. Like Levin's The Stepford Wives series, A Simple Favor seeks to lampoon notions of traditional femininity and partnership partially through the art of fashion.

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