How Kate creates
No- one’s an island on a film set, least of all the costume designer. Depending when they come onto the production, costume designers may be involved in conceptualizing a film’s look and feel or may have to adapt to one already decided. Then they work with the production designer, lighting, make up, stunts and practically every other part of the team to ensure costumes are fit for purpose. “Finally, the actors come in and there’s a good chance they might go, ‘Oh, but I didn’t see my character like that’, or they’ve changed shape, or the measurements you were given are wrong,” says Kate. “Then the stunt guys tell you they need a dozen ‘repeats’, versions of the costume, for the horse- riders, the water guys, or for ‘breakdowns’, where the costumes are distressed. Oh, and ‘ we need them in two days’. “So sometimes it’s total heart attack-ville, and that’s when the chippies come out and we eat our feelings. But we get the job done. It can be a really wonderful, rewarding thing.”
CRIMSON PEAK – EDITH AND LUCILLE This film, a Victorian- inspired fantasy, featured stunning gowns that kept Kate and her team busy crafting and creating. For Edith: “Edith is all about smiling, blooming fertility, with a gold colour palette. For her wedding outfit I found these antique mourning flowers, but I wanted them bigger. So we got antique velvet, dyed it the colour we needed, then laser- cut out hundreds of petal shapes. Then we hand- painted them and sewed them on her dress.”
For Lucille: “In contrast, Lucille is a withered vine where nothing grows. Guillermo wanted to exaggerate Jessica Chastain’s height and slimness, so we had to find a language to make this amazingly beautiful woman look skinny. I looked at lots of photos of the English moors with sheep skeletons in the snow. We decided to paint into the fabric of her dress to suggest a hint of her bones coming through, did lacing on the back so it became like a spine, and fitted everything tight. Jessica then had the idea to wear nine- inch stripper heels. She could run in those heels. Amazing.” SUICIDE SQUAD – HARLEY QUINN Working on any cult film such as Suicide Squad is tricky, Kate says, because the characters have already been created many times and fans have set ideas of how they should look. “David Ayer, the director, didn’t want them to look like superheroes, so we based the costumes on street culture. The conversation is changing in Hollywood around women’s costumes, as women get more power, more control, so I worked closely with [actress and film producer] Margot Robbie to create Harley’s outfit. “I got all the Suicide Squad comics and wrote down everything Harley said about herself and what was said about her. We decided Harley had total choice about how she looked and she didn’t care what others thought. Then Margot and I got out the dress- up boxes and tried everything on until we found a costume we felt Harley would have chosen for herself, rather than one that was imposed on her.”