Styling Gordon Gekko

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps costume designer Ellen Mirojnick discusses how she gave the modern-day Gekko and other characters an appropriately pre-financial crisis look.

Gordon Gekko is back on screen after 23 years, fresh off an eight-year jail sentence for insider trading. When viewers first catch the formerly slick-backed corporate raider in the new film, his face is gruff and his suit is ruffled -- a stark departure from the trim look Ellen Mirojnick created for Gekko in the first Wall Street movie in 1987.

Mirojnick, 61, a longtime Hollywood costume designer whose films include Cloverfield, What Women Want, and Fatal Attraction, dressed Gekko again for the Oliver Stone sequel that opens Sept. 24.

Mirojnick imagined the original Gekko as the Cary Grant of Wall Street -- a seductive, self-made man with movie-star style. In the sequel, Gekko is not only an ex-con, he's a best-selling author and a Cassandra who predicts the economic collapse. He's almost repentant.

So Mirojnick changed her approach to styling him. "Gordon Gekko was a challenge because he's an icon," she says. "How do you incorporate an icon into a story that has a different story line?" In one early scene, Gekko wears a Canali sports jacket. That's a departure from his bespoke suits of old, but it's part of how Mirojnick styles Gekko as the writer he now is.