Shoe blog

Meryl Streep and Julia Child

I recently went to see Julie and Julia which I enjoyed, in large part, because of the marvelous period costumes worn by Meryl Streep. Needless to say, her Julia Child accent was also highly entertaining. As we all know, Julia Child was a towering pillar of a women standing at six feet 2 inches with size 12 feet and, for her role, Meryl Steep needed to grow 6 to 8 inches in order to achieve a fairly accurate portrayal. Needless to say the crew did a lot with camera angles to create the illusion of the vast height difference between Streep’s Julia and Stanley Tucci, who plays Paul Child. Also, very important, of course, was what Streep wore on her feet. In the film, I noticed that the camera often cut off Streep’s feet or hid them behind picturesque French fruit vendors or other props. On the internet, it was also quite difficult to come by photos of Streep’s feet in the film.

Of course Streep wore lifts and platform heels to make herself taller, and some of them were pretty intense. These green striped wedges must have been used for a scene when she needed to be standing right next to someone she should have towered over.

When Streep was sitting, she was able to come down a notch or two. These green pumps are a bit more normal.

Even when she was alone in a scene, she still had to look huge. The props department custom-built sets that were a bit shrunken in order to continue the illusion. These hidden platform spectator heels also helped.

It was well-known that Julia Child tended to wear very sensible shoes with low heels most of the time. And though the need to make Streep taller made the costumes very slightly historically inaccurate, it was definitely necessary in this case. I think the costume and set designers really had their work cut out for them and they did an excellent job. The movie was sweet and enjoyable, particularly the parts set in 1950s Paris. It does bring up the ever-present question of whether moviegoers approve of historical innacuracies in film, especially when those films are endeavoring to stick to actual reality.

Here are a few more costumes from the film (no shoes visible unfortunately).

This photo also shows Jane Lynch (famous from Glee, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Role Models) She was hilarious as Julia’s sister Dorothy.

In learning about this film, I also read that there was a significant food budget for the making of it. In the past, food in films was often cut from soap or shellacked into submission. However, for Julie and Julia the food was not only edible, but most of it was exactly what it claimed to be. A rare and expensive brie was in fact a rare and expensive brie. Amy Adams took cooking lessons so she could emulate someone with pretty extensive cooking skills. Pretty fun set!