In 2009, the film-maker Nancy Meyers was in an editing suite at Sony Pictures, fine-tuning the details of her next movie, It’s Complicated. That morning, her focus was the back garden of Jane, a successful Santa Barbara baker played by Meryl Streep. The garden included an extensive lawn, a swing-seat and a French-style potager garden, where Jane could wander about gathering ripe tomatoes in a fetching wicker basket. Meyers had already instructed an editor to erase dead trees and add a water feature, and now she was engaged in the process of smoothing out the yard’s remaining foliage. “Every plant that is spiky is removed from this movie,” was her instruction. “Keep it all soft.”
Meyers is one of the most commercially successful female film-makers in Hollywood, famed for productions such as Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday and What Women Want, and the meticulous aesthetic of her films has long been part of their appeal. It includes throws and cushions and candles, books, cut flowers and high thread counts. She herself once noted how the look had been described as “the cashmere world of Nancy Meyers” – beige, unexceptional, and yet somehow endlessly coveted.
