He only appeared for six tiny seconds in “Borat,” proudly worn by Sacha Baron Cohen. But it was already more than enough to put it into posterity. A look back at the creation of a cult accessory.
After having played rapper Ali G on English television, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen arrived in 2006 with a new character, Borat.
Originally from Kazakhstan, Borat Sagdiyev is a falsely candid fictional journalist who attempts to raise the paradoxes and hypocrisy of society through satirical interviews where his misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic questions do not fail to provoke unexpected reactions. .
Between the singing of the Kazakh anthem over the American anthem in front of an audience of rodeo fans, a race in the simplest apparatus in a hotel, the kidnapping of Pamela Anderson… Sacha Baron Cohen did not deny himself anything , giving free rein to his madness in this documentary filmed largely on a hidden camera.
Which inevitably had its share of complications, between the avalanche of police arrests (91!!!) and trials.
Six seconds to go down in history
However, in the middle of this river of very bad taste, widely acclaimed by a hilarious public, it is above all a very brief sequence which will mark the spirits. In just six seconds: the one where Borat proudly displays his famous neon green mankini.
It must also be said that the actor had already prepared the ground, since he came to the Croisette that year to walk the beach and the streets of Cannes wearing his one-piece swimsuit.
Souvenir sequence, below…
A swimsuit that has attracted many followers, with sometimes very problematic consequences. As in 2017 precisely in Kazakhstan, which logically did not really taste the tribulations of Sacha Baron Cohen, accused of ridiculing the country. That year, six Czech tourists were arrested in the country for wearing the jersey..
It is to costume designer Jason Alper that we owe the mankini, inseparable from the actor since it is also he who is behind the creation of the improbable looks of Ali G or Brüno. Although he has sometimes WTF costumes to his credit, he has never before created something like the mankini.
“We created Borat on The Da Ali G Show, but when it became a film, there was a whole background around the character. In that respect, I always treated the character like a real person. It’s a real person who travels, so he would have his suit, he would have his pajamas and he would have something to swim and sunbathe in. All of that would go in his bag.
The clothes had to look like they were actually worn and people had to believe this guy was real. I love going into detail about what he would have in his pockets and wallet, like Kazakh money and old Kazakh press clippings.
Twentieth Century Fox France
To me, it made sense that Borat’s wardrobe was made up of clothes that arrived in Kazakhstan and were popular in the United States 20 years before. The beauty of it is that people can relate to it. Borat’s costume is just slightly oversized. It’s not funny, it’s just a little off.”
What about the mankini then? “The sequence works because it was in a controlled environment. The sequence only lasts a few seconds in the film. […] In fact I didn’t have any particular design for it, it was just a jersey that we threw in his suitcase to fill his wardrobe.
Sacha and I were talking about these leopard jumpsuits worn by bodybuilders and weightlifters in Eastern Europe, and I thought it would be fun if we could make a thong out of them. So I took one that I started cutting for the top, and I took Speedo briefs for the bottom. It was made of spandex, with a reinforced gusset effect [au niveau des parties intimes].
Three times nothing. For the color, however, it had to be reminiscent of spandex things from the 80s. I also thought about how to wear it. That’s how I made the designed part with the speedo narrower, so that if you run with your knees outward, your “package” won’t fall. On the other hand, if you run normally, that will be the case!”
Genius in simplicity.