The Darjeeling Limited

I very much enjoyed Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited from a design standpoint. The color palette—two specific blues, a bright gold, a pale green, desert neutrals and the occasional touch of red—was specific down to the last detail. My theory is that the palette must have been at least partially inspired by the colors of the peacock feathers that play a role in the Whitman brothers' journey.

Whether on the Darjeeling Limited train itself (where use of the palette is perhaps most overt), in an exterior location (rural India, New York), or on the train but hearkening to another location (Jack Whitman wears a robe and has stationery from the Parisian Hotel Chevalier that fit the train's colors precisely), the palette is extremely consistent—in one town scene, for example, where the frame is filled with the neutrals of clothing and buildings, the blues, gold and reds are snuck into background elements or painted subtly onto a few architectural bricks. The train itself is something of a design wonder—everything on board was custom created, down to the hand-painted Rajasthani elephants on the corridor walls. And, at the end of the film, when the brothers board another train, it is clear that a new version of the palette is at play.

I must also admit to an obsession with the design of the Whitmans' monogrammed luggage set, which was created for the film by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton and covered with jungle illustrations by Eric Anderson (the filmmaker's brother). Each bag was numbered—I believe there were ten bags—and apparently the design was strictly dictated by Wes Anderson. The luggage fascinated me. What was the significance of the #7 bag being the only piece with a red monogram? Why were the numbers on #9 and #10 given a different treatment and put within shapes?

I loved absorbing the colors and details of the film (and I'm not the only one—Men's Flair has waxed rhapsodic about the symbolism in the colors of the brothers' grey flannel suits), and highly recommend it as candy for the design eye. The Darjeeling Limited is currently available on DVD.