One of the first things people picked up on during the filming of A24’s Marty Supreme wasn’t the dramatic plot, the stellar cast, what’s said to be Timothée Chalamet’s best performance to date, nor the cunning ways of its protagonist. It was the insanely good tailoring and retro sportswear that characterised almost every scene, from beginning to end.

The film is loosely drawn on American table tennis legend Marty Reisman, the US men’s singles champion of 1958 and 1960 and US hardbat champion in 1997. In it, Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a young player who’s earning his way in his uncle’s shoe shop in the Lower East Side in the early 1950s.

He’s slender and a little insolent, but certainly determined to make his dreams come true. Through a series of slightly feverish misadventures and financial catastrophes, we see him at last reach the table tennis championships in Wembley that he’d saved up for. Then he hustles his way into a free room at the Ritz, where he meets retired film star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her husband and possible sponsor Milton (Kevin O’Leary), who ends up organising a staged rematch between Marty and his longtime Japanese rival Koto Endo.

The dramatic, almost vertiginous back-and-forth of scenes, places and characters have a distinct fil rouge – and that’s the sheer breadth of costumes brilliantly executed by director Josh Safdie’s longtime collaborator, Miyako Bellizzi.

“There was so much research and so many costumes involved in this,” Bellizzi says. “We looked at films by Ken Jacobs, which documented the Lower East Side world in the 1950s. And that became our blueprint for style. Books, street photography and portraiture were all part of our references, as well as hours and hours of ping-pong games.”

Marty’s brash but fun-in-jest spirit extends far beyond his personality. “It’s almost like he’s a kid dressing up in men’s clothes,” she says. “The dress-for-the-job-you-want kind of thing. It feels aspirational. He dressed for the man he thought he was going to become.”

That translates to boxy, double-breasted jackets with substantial shoulder pads, high-waisted, single-pleated trousers cinched to the waist, billowing shirts in subtle striped patterns with skinny and pointy collars. Gabardine jackets are also made to be a little wider in the body to create movement. Then there are the ping-pong uniforms – mostly sweatshirts and trousers – and a white tank top that he, like most men did at the time, wears every day.

“I got really involved in the details of what makes a suit from 1949 different from a suit tailored in 1954,” Bellizzi says. “In the Lower East Side in that period, they were a little behind, so these draw more on the late-1940s zoot suits.”

The real Marty was eccentric and loud and wore all sorts of colours and prints. “There are certain times in the film where that comes out, but more so with uniforms. When he’s with the Harlem Globetrotters, for instance.” Elsewhere, a blue diamond-stitch polo, a lavender paisley shirt – “a little daring for a guy his age”.

The nuances between Marty’s suits and those worn by the other characters are subtle but intentional. Milton is a wealthy businessman from the Upper East Side who owns a pen company. He’s well-travelled – in a way Marty wants to be. His jackets are also double-breasted with peak lapels, but with a more streamlined shape. His colour palette is more thought out and adapted to different environments – he’s in grey in London, in black with a red tie in Paris, in navy with a pink tie in Tokyo.

Marty’s taxi-driver friend, Wally (played by Tyler, the Creator), is from Harlem, and fittingly dressed in zoot suits with really wide pants. “Tyler was so fun to dress,” Bellizzi says. “He just gets it. And that’s a bit like his personal style, too. He was so open and had so much fun like going through the racks, we spent a whole day trying on different stuff.”

Then there are the boleros at the bowling alley. And the multitude of ping-pong players from 16 different countries around the world. “I tried to make them all different in terms of shapes,” Bellizzi says. “From the more European ones for Hungary and Germany to Marty’s American ones, to the East Asian countries, to Brazil and Argentina. There’s one shot when you see a picture of all these teams together – it’s maybe one second of the movie, but it took me so long to bring to life.”

Despite being clinically true to the early 1950s, Bellizzi’s costumes feel refreshingly contemporary – which is perhaps what makes Marty Supreme so culturally and sartorially relevant. The blazers are the kind of style you can easily spot on a Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga or Acne Studios runway, or on a red carpet. “When I saw what Jacob Elordi wore at the British Fashion Awards I thought, that could be a Marty suit.”