Sharon Stone’s horrifying reason for keeping her costumes: “I was so embarrassed”
When you’ve played as many iconic characters as Sharon Stone has, it’s easy to lose track. She first appeared on the public radar as Jesse Huston, the woman who hires Allan Quartermain in two films based on King Solomon’s Mines. Her big breakthrough was as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s scheming wife in Total Recall, which set the mould for future appearances in Basic Instinct, Silver, and Martin Scorsese’s Casino.
One method Stone could use to differentiate her on-screen personas is through their costumes. There’s the white minidress from Basic Instinct that launched a thousand pause buttons and became one of the most noteworthy pieces of film costume of all time. As Ginger, the mob trophy wife in Casino, she was constantly decked out in sparkly clothes with plenty of jewellery to match. However, luckily for the star, she doesn’t need to remember her dozens and dozens of outfits, because she has them all at home.
During an interview with The Times, Stone revealed that she has retained many of the iconic costumes her characters have worn over the years. Unfortunately, there’s a sad story at the heart of this neat bit of trivia. “After I did a television film in the 1980s, they sold my wardrobe at a discount at the studio to make their money back, and they were selling my underwear,” she revealed. “I was so embarrassed and uncomfortable that the crew guys were rummaging around in my underpants, I thought ‘never again’. So I had it put into my contracts that I keep all my clothes from films, unless they are studio rentals.”
While she doesn’t name the movie that shamelessly flogged her unmentionables, Stone starred in some proper tripe before she got famous. There’s Blood and Sand, the badly organised Spanish movie that the pin-up has spoken openly about absolutely hating. She has a small part in Police Academy 4, one of the few movies to score the dreaded 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Combine that with various other atrocious action flicks, dire comedies, and the like, and there’s simply no way of tracking down who the pant-pedalling culprits could be.
Mercifully, it’s not all bad news for Stone and her wardrobe. She does have fond memories attached to some of her clothes. “I keep the white minidress from Basic Instinct in a safe but have a ton of shoes from that movie in my closet, like black split-toe Gucci heels and strappy gold-studded ones,” she revealed. “The rest of the costumes are in storage. The clothes from Casino were magnificent. What an amazing job Rita Ryack, the costume designer, did. I took the Pucci jacket that Ginger dies in.”
Inspired by old advertisements and films for her work, Ryack had previously collaborated with director Martin Scorsese on his features After Hours and Cape Fear, as well as with Casino star Robert De Niro on his directorial debut, A Bronx Tale. She was nominated for an Oscar for her work on How the Grinch Stole Christmas and later an Emmy for the 2010 TV movie You Don’t Know Jack, starring fellow Scorsese favourite Al Pacino.
Misogyny is still rampant, and the fight against it soldiers on. Making content out of celebrities, especially women, by selling things they wore or touched, or breathed on, is a gross practice that is often duplicitous and steals agency from the person to put it into the hands of the highest bidder. Nobody should be forced to go through the humiliation that Stone faced when she realised that her worn costumes were being sold off to random punters. This highlights the careless and hideous treatment that female actors faced at the time, and you can only hope that this practice doesn’t persist today.
