California Apparel News

Film and television costumes help the actors convey the story—and help them create the character. Costumes can transport the audience to a specific time period from the past, create a fantasy world in the future or ground the story in the contemporary world of today.

It’s award-show season, and costume designers are being recognized for the artistic flair that they bring to the world of entertainment. On Feb. 25, the Costume Designers Guild held its 12th Annual Awards to honor the outstanding film and television costume designs of 2009. The event precedes the March 7 Academy Awards, when costume designers will again be honored for their work in recent films.

At the star-studded Costume Designers Guild Awards Gala, held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, designers were recognized by their peers for their talents and contributions to costume design.

Celebs and renowned names in film and television—including Nicole Kidman, Alan Cummings, Nancy Sinatra, Loni Anderson and Rob Marshall—turned out for the event. Awards were given across all categories of film and television costume design. In addition, the Costume Designers Guild honored actress Emily Blunt with the Swarovski Award and Kidman presented director Rob Marshall with the Distinguished Collaborator Award. Costume designers—including Sandy Powell, Robert Turturice and Michael Travis—were honored for their career achievements in costume design. (See below for a detailed list of all the evening’s winners).

Recently, California Apparel News Fashion Editor N. Jayne Seward and Contributing Editor Claudia Schou caught up with Danny Glicker, Catherine Leterrier and Monique Prudhomme to find out more about their work on this year’s nominated films. Here is a Q&A with the designers, whose work ranges across the categories of contemporary, period and fantasy film. Each of the designers were recognized by the Costume Designers Guild for their work this year. And Leterrier and Prudhomme are among this year’s Oscar nominees for Outstanding Costume Design.DANNY GLICKER “Up in the Air”

Danny Glicker was nominated last year for an Academy Award for his costume-design work on “Milk.” This year, he was nominated in the “Excellence in Contemporary Film” category by the Costume Designers Guild for his work on “Up in the Air.” The film depicts the life of a business traveler portrayed by George Clooney. Glicker “got his chops” designing costumes in the New York indie movie scene and on Broadway before beginning his career in Hollywood. His credits include “Thank You for Smoking,” “We Are Marshall” and “Transamerica.” Glicker is recognized for his meticulous attention to detail, which is necessary for the accurate portrayal of a character especially in contemporary filmmaking. What was the inspiration behind the designs?

D.G.: I wanted to really honor the world of business travelers. And I know that doesn’t sound very exciting, but it really is because it’s a world where there’s a lot of rules and there’s a lot of little secrets that business travelers know. Things like people might obsess over the fact that his shirts are never wrinkled and they would think that because he travels so much his shirts would be wrinkled. But in fact it’s the casual traveler who has wrinkled shirts. The business traveler knows to get wrinkle-free cotton shirts. It’s those weird little tricks that circumvent your expectations about the world of business travel. So, once I really got into it and really examined it, I then wanted to create a world that honored his physical reality but also his emotional reality. In the beginning of the movie, it’s crisp and efficient and it looks elegant and quite glamorous, and as the movie goes on you realize that there is something vaguely monotonous about it all and then as it ends it’s sort of hellish almost and a little chaotic even. So it’s really about taking this one motif—it’s almost like music—and then you repeat it enough and then you change it enough that it begins to become something else. That was a really important focus for the look of “Up in the Air.” Were you able to able to add your own personal touches to the film?

D.G.: You know how they say that every drawing is a self-portrait? I feel like it’s hard for me to analyze how much of it has my own personal flair, but I will say that I gave it a lot of passion. And I certainly gave it a lot of my soul because I wanted to make sure that when business travelers are watching the movie—even though it’s a glamorized version of what they do—they were seeing things that still made sense to them. Likewise, with the women’s costumes—with the gorgeous Vera Farmiga—I wanted to give her stuff that was incredibly and impossibly sexy and powerful, but also realistically professional and that didn’t look soulless, that had some kind of special glow about it, that really spoke to this woman as an individual. And then sort of in the opposite spectrum with Anna Kendrick I wanted to use her clothes to show a woman who doesn’t want to reveal anything about herself through her clothes—a woman who is so frightened that the world’s not going to take her seriously that she doesn’t know who she is yet that she’s trying to hide her identity behind her clothes. Of course, that’s telling, but it’s a challenging way to have to tell a story.The color palette of the film was very distinct. What was the mood that you hoped to set with the color?

D.G.: It’s a very cool palette. It’s a very crisp and business-like palette, but I never wanted it to be so oppressively over-stated that you felt like you were watching a movie in a tone. It’s not like we wanted the movie to be washed in a cool tone, but we wanted to create just the accurate feel to this business world. And also because Ryan has a very hard job, and one of the nicest things about the character of Ryan is he cares enormously about his job and about doing his job well and about the dignity of the people that he has to work with that he has to fire. It was always about creating a firm and professional appearance and then that kind of dictate went throughout the entire movie, and then it was about creating the world where this should be appropriate. But it’s like someone took an entire box of crayons, dumped all of them out, gave me three, and then they’re like “Now, do your movie.” And in a weird way, it’s liberating because everything else that’s important is still there —fit and texture and pattern—and it’s a really fun and special way to work.What physical attributes does George Clooney have that you wanted to emphasize with your designs?

D.G.: That’s a really good question because in many ways I was trying to deemphasize a lot of his physical attributes—because George Clooney is a very good-looking man and he looks phenomenal in a suit. I didn’t want that to be the overriding thing. We didn’t want him to seem like a cruel and heartless shark who was coming in there to cut people down. And so while putting him in these crisp and professional suits, I had to find ways with a very American silhouette, with a very conservative cut and proportion, to take away some of the more intrinsically debonair qualities that George possesses so he would seem like he could be on the level of the people that he was firing because I genuinely believe that Ryan Bingham sees himself as someone who has been put on earth to make their lives less painful. And I never wanted them to see some sharky Italian suit because that would just add salt to the wound.What brands did George Clooney wear in the film?

D.G.: A lot of it was custom-made, but a lot of it was inspired by Brooks Brothers because I really felt like this movie is about the American work place right now. It is not supposed to be a timeless story, I think that the human story is timeless, but the physical story is about right now, which is exciting for a movie.

[A costume designer’s focus is] on telling the truth, and that’s just as hard to do for a movie like “Up in the Air” as it is to do a movie like “Milk” because the truth is the truth no matter what the era and no matter what the silhouette. It’s just about telling the truth through the clothes.

CATHERINE LETERRIER “Coco Before Chanel”The exciting challenge of creating costumes for the film portraying the life of legendary designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was given to Catherine Leterrier. The film depicts life of Chanel during the time period leading up to the creation of her fashion empire. Leterrier won the French Ceacute;sar Award in 2000 and 2004 and has designed the costumes for films such as “Pret-a-Porter,” “Gorillas In the Midst” and “A Good Year.” This year, the French designer was nominated for “Excellence in Period Film” by the Costume Designers Guild for her work on “Coco Before Chanel” and is also nominated for an Academy Award for “Best Costume Design” for her work on the film. How did you research the character of Coco Chanel?

C.L.: I researched mostly through pictures of her because there are a few pictures of her from this time. There are no clothes at all left from this period, but there were some pictures. So, I used those pictures to evoke and tell me the story of how she was then. She was very poor. She was not thinking of becoming a couturier designer, and like everybody poor in this time, she knew how to sew from the education that she got with the nuns. Because there was evidently not anything ready-to-wear—there were working outfits that you could buy in big department stores—but if you wanted something different, it was the poor people themselves who would sew. What was the biggest challenge of the film?

C.L.: The biggest challenge was not to disappoint the audience because Chanel now has an image all over the world and since the movie takes place before she is the real Chanel we know. She was very poor, and I thought maybe they will be frustrated not to see [her designs except] what you see for one minute and a half at the end. I think it was challenging to do that. What is important for Anne Fontaine, the director, she was interested in the soul. Anne Fontaine gave me the fashion responsibility on the movie, but her responsibility was to show how such a woman with such a mind made what Chanel did.The film focuses on Chanel’s life before she creates her fashion empire. How did you incorporate Chanel’s future and now-iconic style into the film?

C.L.: I tried to put as many future Chanel coats as I could in the beginning in an attempt to dress herself then. It was a little early, but I used what she used slightly later—like the jersey that was basically for underwear, she used it for real outfits. She used tweeds. In fact, she used tweeds later when she was more in the 30s, but then people who were riding on horseback would wear tweed. I made Balsan wear tweed himself so she could discover the tweed. Then I made working outfits like the sailor top that she could have seen in Deauville to use for herself. I also made the pajamas—which are rather new even for men because men used to sleep with nightshirts. And I tried to make this bow which in the film she makes into a real Chanel black bow. It was very symptomatic because I used a man’s tie that she makes into a Chanel bow and she cuts the ends of the men’s tie. It is a gesture which is very important. She has many gestures in that movie which are very important. For instance, she cuts the corset in the back to free her sister then. She takes off her corset to free herself. She doesn’t want to ride on horseback [like a lady]. She wants to ride like a man. It’s very symbolic all the time to free the woman, to free the body and to show that the free body was beautiful. Also, she was the one who started that to be without the veil at the beach and to be tan was beautiful, to have short hair was beautiful, to have all those signs of freedom for women were beautiful. Did you have access to the Chanel archives?

C.L.: Yes, I’m very friendly with them. They have even loaned me bracelets from the archives that I’m going to wear at the Oscars. I’m very friendly with all the curators there—I have known them for years. So I could use their archives on pictures but they have nothing before the first World War. They have nothing because Chanel was a milliner. [In] the final scene on the stairs at Chanel, [the clothing] is from the [Chanel] Conservatory. I didn’t want to re-create anything from Chanel. I didn’t want to copy anything. When you are confronted with somebody like Chanel, to copy something, I thought it was not what I wanted to do. So I felt very free in the movie because nothing was left of that time.

The one minute and a half which is on the real stairs of the House of Chanel [features] a few things from the Conservatory, but it’s much after our time. It’s not the right period. You see only impressions because we wanted something very abstract. But it’s real things from the Conservatory. Real accessories, real everything. Because I thought it’s absolutely of no interest to re-create Chanel. I would not want to do that. Did you build all of the costumes?

C.L.: I drew everything. I built everything. I had a workshop for that. We had a workshop for jewelry, we had a workshop for fans and we had parasols made. I even had many, many hats made for the movie. I asked Stephen Jones, the milliner, to make Coco’s hats and then I asked Pippa Cleator, another milliner, to build for me because I wanted them a little over the top. She made about 500 because there are instances in the film where I was very inspired by [John Singer] Sergeant paintings, by Spanish painters such as [Joaquin] Sorolla. He has made many [paintings of] women by the sea with veils and big hats. I thought that [it was important to show] the corsets and those huge hats going to the beach.

I also wanted the fashion to be very pretty. I didn’t want to show Chanel making something beautiful and the fashion of the time being awful. I didn’t want that. I wanted to show how she could be revolutionary in a period when the fashion was lovely. I think it’s more interesting. It was lovely, but who wanted to go to the beach with a corset, a fluffy hat, a veil, and lace boots, gloves and a parasol?

MONIQUE PRUDHOMME “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”Monique Prudhomme has designed films as diverse as ’The Neverending Story III,” “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” and “Juno.” To create the costumes for “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” the designer delved into her rich background in art history. Prudhomme faced the challenge of creating costumes for the film, which is set in present day but tells the story of the sideshow troupe and Doctor Parnassus’ fantastical “Imaginarium.” Prudhomme won the Costume Designers Guild Award for “Excellence in Fantasy Film” and is nominated for “Best Costume Design” at the upcoming Academy Awards. What was the biggest challenge of the film?

M.P.: The biggest challenge was the fact that this movie and this script were so huge, and it was covering so much ground. It was to find a way to bring this idea of eternal life into the contemporary world of 2010. And how these people living in a caravan as gypsies in a way, but also with baggage, how do they live in our world right now? So that was the idea. The idea was to research images, imagery from everywhere from all over the world. Indian and Chinese and Russian, Czech, Spanish whatever and from different periods and being inspired by Commedia dell’arte theater from the 16th to 17th century but bring that in the real world with real people living in the mud, in the streets.How did you go about the research for such a massive project?

M.P.: This is one of the things that is really exciting about our job is that I have a big library and I bring things in and you go on the Internet and you have access to imagery—and imagery is your inspiration. You have to feed your imagination in order to bring [ideas]. And also being able to use what is available.

In a way, all this was constructed with things I found, things we made, things we bought and it’s like a sculpture you just mold it and suddenly it becomes a character. The character is always the base, right? Of who they are, their psychology, their spirit, what they do, where they go, and this is what drives the image of what to do. Where did you find the costumes?

M.P.: I was based in London when we did all the preparation for the movie. So I found stuff in costume houses, I found stuff at second-hand stores, at fancy stores and I invented stuff. We had a very intense short prep and we had to find a way to do the stage. There was a stage show and then there was the real life part and there was the “Imaginarium” part. So it was really three different looks. And how we go and we travel through these and to get finally Valentina in the real world being happy as an actualized woman, which is one part of the arc of the movie.This was Heath Ledger’s last film, and he died during the making of it. How did that affect the costumes and the process of making the movie?

M.P.: It affected us tremendously because Heath plays one of the principal characters, who brings Valentina, the daughter, from being a girl to being a woman and finds her freedom at the end of the movie, so this character is really important. What happened though is that when we were shooting in London we did all our exterior shots. So all the real life and the ins and outs of all the exteriors was shot in London with Heath in different costumes. When Heath passed away, it totally crushed us, and absolutely we all fell apart. We almost lost our movie. Terry Gilliam [the director and co-screenwriter] had to invent a way to bring that character back into life and how can we make it work. So he brought this idea that Tony has four faces. He has the Tony in real life, which we shot, and then there was the romantic Tony with Johnny Depp and then the ambitious Tony with Jude Law and then there is Tony who meets his fate and dramatic Tony, who is played by Colin Farrell. But all that costume-wise was relatively simple because we had established that he wears that white suit and so I got yards and yards and yards of more fabric and a fantastic tailor and we tailored a new suit based on the same design for all the guys. And they were all so gracious and all so lovely and so ready to work and to do their thing. I felt really, really fortunate that I met all these guys. They were so cool.