The first glimpse the audience gets of Reynolds Woodcock in “Phantom Thread” is not as we will come to know him, armored in ruthless grace, but as a fragile man. On a stool, wearing a white shirt, he slides red socks up his thin legs the way that a child might. We see Woodcock’s shoulders twitch a little, and the little angry jerks of the fabric. We watch as he combs his hair, and approaches the mirror and snips the hairs from his nostrils. He snips, pauses, considers, snips again. It’s an almost vulgar display of force and detail, and one comes to understand that this is a rare intrusion into the fretful energy that stirs beneath Woodcock’s polished, public persona. This is not the effortless cool of an aesthete but the white-knuckled effort of someone trying desperately to hold onto his sense of self. “Phantom Thread” exposes Woodcock’s personal style as not merely a disguise but an attempted curative for his febrile self.

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film tells the story of Woodcock, a postwar English designer (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), and his courtship of a young woman named Alma (played by Vicky Krieps, in a star-making role), as their relationship evolves into one of vivid obsession, stunning reversals, and a scintillating collision of wills. “Phantom Thread” has already collected a chest of awards, and it’s nominated for six Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Score, and, most important, Best Costume Design. At its finest moments, “Phantom Thread” shows the power that costumes impart to the depth and feeling of a story.

There is a monastic air in the House of Woodcock, and not merely because of its astringent immaculacy. In the workroom, the seamstresses don their white chore coats and set about the task of fabricating Woodcock’s designs. They walk on hard, black heels from table to table, taking measurements, aligning muslin, cutting fabric. They work with the quiet piety of nuns in a religious order. Woodcock drifts among them in his own chore coat, hands behind his back, peering down his nose and through his glasses. Everyone is adorned in the same severe lines, the same starched, brilliant white. Utility and simplicity are a single unit.

Then Woodcock flees the city for his country home. Here, he turns into a bit of a rustic in dark, earthy knits. Woodcock stops for breakfast, and Alma literally stumbles into the frame, drawing his attention with a clatter. He’s wearing a casual sport coat in plaid and a dark, heavy shirt left unbuttoned at the neck with a green tartan ascot. It’s a sharp break from the dark-gray suit and the lavender bow tie he wore in a preceding dinner scene in the city. Alma, like the other waitresses, is wearing a red dress under a white apron, and this, too, is a departure from the city; women aren’t wreathed in black and sombre tones. There is a hint of friction as they test each other: Woodcock delivers a comically long list of food and then snatches the order slip; Alma delivers the order in full with a wry smile and says, “For the hungry boy.”

Later, they go to dinner and return to Woodcock’s country home, where their flirtation deepens. By the fire, Woodcock tells Alma in cryptic fragments about his family, his mother, his sister, his past. We have come to expect this from him—the chiselled, aphoristic anecdote, speech that is both direct and elliptical. (In an earlier scene, Woodcock murmurs about unsettled feelings and ghostly impressions to his sister Cyril.) Silhouetted by the fire, Woodcock wears his charcoal double-breasted suit with a whimsical but very grave bow tie in dark green tartan. Alma asks Woodcock why he is not married and Woodcock explains that marriage would only make him deceitful. Alma then says, “You sound so sure of things.” Woodcock visibly tenses. “I’m sure of that,” he says.

Further Reading New Yorker writers on the 2018 Academy Awards.

Instead of the careless confidence one might expect, the line is delivered with a flinch, a torrent of frustration at Alma for questioning the firmament of his life. Alma replies, “I think you are only acting strong.” She smiles—her dress is red again, with prim little buttons right up the collar. Woodcock relaxes, laughs a little. He’s been caught out. For a few moments, he reverts to the boyish, uncertain figure whom we glimpsed in the earliest parts of the film. It’s an arresting image; the country is the place where Woodcock is supposed to be at his most comfortable. It’s his home. It’s his fire. Alma is there by his invitation. He is dressed impeccably. Yet the bow tie comes to seem a little sad, a little silly; Woodcock’s effort to dress himself so sharply begin to resemble the efforts of an insecure man desperate to compensate for something.

One of the great thrills of “Phantom Thread” is the way that it lingers on the details of style. The quirks of a wardrobe become more, not less, remarkable under this sustained scrutiny. Fashion is all about control—of the viewer’s eye, of a client’s body, of oneself—so good style becomes the highest form of self-mastery, the ability to control what of oneself the world is allowed to access. Woodcock’s great hubris has everything to do with controlling the bodies of the women he dresses—they can barely breathe, can barely move, they are there to be propped and looked at—but it also has to do with wanting to control how the world reaches him.

Early in their courtship, Woodcock and Alma walk beside the sea ensconced behind thick wool cowls and outercoats. There is an illusion of comfort, warmth, gentleness. But one suspects that beneath lies the true hitch and scrape of Woodcock and Alma’s relationship. Later in the film, the two begin to chafe against each other. Alma, now Woodcock’s muse, exerts her opinions about Woodcock’s designs. He dismisses her opinions, and we come to understand that his muses are meant to be silent. Alma is noisy during breakfast, and Woodcock storms from the table, his routine disrupted. They go on this way, Alma trying to recapture some of their earlier intimacy, and Woodcock growing more and more annoyed by her very presence. (Warning: spoilers follow.) In a bid for power, Alma secretly poisons him with mushrooms, and this leads to one of the film’s most gorgeous moments: Woodcock, after struggling with the violent illness brought upon him, wears a robe as he kneels on a settee next to Alma. They make up, and he proposes.

A simple thing, a robe, and yet it captures so much of what it feels like to have passed so close to disaster; while a robe can mean leisure, it can also signal a lack of will or strength or desire to dress oneself. A robe can feel like submission. Gone are the drape and structure of Woodcock’s daywear, and all that’s left is the frailty.