Brie Larson’s Directorial Debut Unicorn Store Is Filled With Plenty of Colorful Fashion

Brie Larson made her directorial debut at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival with Unicorn Store, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that the quirky coming-of-age dramedy found a home on Netflix, as part of a two-film deal that also includes Larson’s forthcoming effort Lady Business. On Friday, the streaming service released the first trailer for Larson’s film, which will premiere online April 5.

In Unicorn Store, Larson plays Kit, a young woman who flunks out of art school for painting, it appears, with too many rainbows and puffs of glitter, moves back in with her parents (played by Joan Cusack and Bradley Whitford), and takes up a dead-end position at a temp agency, replacing her whimsical palette of blues, purples, sparkles, and greens for the drab template of corporate life. She receives a mysterious, multicolor invitation to a mysterious, subterranean shop where a storekeeper played by Samuel L. Jackson (clad in a pink suit and an afro garnished with tinsel) claims, while jabbing a finger at Kit, to sell “what you need.” And what Kit needs, naturally, is a unicorn.

“If I have one brought here, I have to know that you’re for real,” Jackson’s character says. So Kit sets about preparing her home for her new unicorn’s arrival, much to the chagrin of her parents and to the bemusement of a hardware store clerk (Mamoudou Athie, of Patti Cake$) Kit befriends along the way.

“The most grown-up thing you can do is fail at things you really care about,” Cusack, as Kit’s mom, says in the trailer, which sounds like a thesis statement for a film about being the childish adult black sheep of your family. Upon its release, Unicorn Store, which was scored by Larson’s former fiancé Alex Greenwald, received some middling reviews, largely for its sort of meandering plot and themes. “Unicorn Store charts a wayward journey of self-growth that never achieves even the slightest hint of narrative momentum,” IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in a review upon its TIFF premiere.

But Larson’s own performance and elements of her directorial style were equally pulled out for praise. Something else to look out for: the costumes. In the trailer alone, Kit wears a rainbow- and star-patterned matching set (sort of like Jenny Lewis’s Voyager look, but pajamas), a green glittery fringed look worthy of Alessandro Michele’s Gucci, various rainbow stripes, and twee pleated skirts. Even her office look—a tea-length pleated skirt and matching blazer with a floral button-down—wouldn’t be out of place on Thom Browne’s runway. Browne, after all, is a noted fan of the unicorn. See the full trailer below.