Could this suit save Derek Jarman’s legacy?
Award-winning costume designer Sandy Powell tells Bethan Holt why she is on a mission to honour her mentor
This awards season, it wasn’t just actresses in designer dresses and priceless jewellery attracting attention on the red carpet. One of the most talked-about looks at both the Baftas and the Oscars was costume designer Sandy Powell’s. Shunning the traditional gown, she donned the same cream toile trouser suit for both events, covering it in more and more A-list autographs as she went. After each awards ceremony, Powell would post pictures of her adventures in film industry autograph gathering; there was Brad Pitt signing a shoulder, Scarlett Johansson scribing at her hip and even Janelle Monáe leaving her autograph on Powell’s posterior.
“It made every minute of it enjoyable, usually there are long periods of boring things happening at those ceremonies, waiting around, but with this, I always had something to do,” says Powell, who has won Oscars for her costume design on The Aviator, Shakespeare in Love and
The Young Victoria.
Not that she was creating her signature-covered suit for the pure fun of it. Her project came about as part of a fundraising initiative to help save Prospect Cottage, the home of legendary filmmaker, and Powell’s beloved mentor, Derek Jarman.
Situated in Dungeness on the Kent coast, Jarman’s home is a temple to his legacy, from the garden he created on the shingle beach to driftwood sculptures and his poetry etched into the windows. After Jarman’s death at just 52 from an Aids-related illness in 1994, his home was maintained by his partner, Keith Collins. But when Collins realised he was dying from a brain tumour in 2018, he told a close group of friends – including Powell and the actress Tilda Swinton, who both still loved visiting the cottage – that he wanted the home to be put into trust and preserved as a cultural destination for the nation.
The niggle? The Art Fund needs to raise £3.5million by March 31 to
‘This is a big thank you for Derek, no one else. He’d have had huge fun with it’
conserve Prospect Cottage and its contents for future generations, with plans for free public access via guided tours and artists residencies.
Powell had already vowed to do all she could to help but what, exactly, she wasn’t sure. When she was unexpectedly nominated for her work on The Irishman, an idea began to percolate. “I thought I just couldn’t get new clothes made – I didn’t have the time or the money,” says Powell, who is distinguished by her fabulous sweep of orange hair. “Bafta was making these announcements, saying that we should be making attempts to be more sustainable – wear vintage, wear something from the back of your wardrobe.”
Powell’s bold personal style means that she’s always been one to watch on the red carpet, often wearing offbeat looks which offer a joyful point of contrast to the glamorous actresses – in 2016, she paid homage to David Bowie by recreating his Life on Mars look at the Baftas in a shimmering turquoise suit, and when she won the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love in 1999, her corseted red dress had something of the Tudor queen about it. She’s also eschewed heels, preferring Stella Mccartney platforms which feel like flats – “they’re really long nights and I find heels crippling. You’re also thinking, ‘what if I do have to get up and walk on stage? I need to make sure I’m not wobbling’,” she notes, with a refreshing dose of reality.
So how to send a very 2020 message with this year’s outfit? If Joaquin Phoenix would be wearing the same Stella Mccartney tux for every awards show, so could she. Powell decided to make use of the calico toile which her tailor and friend Ian Wallace had used to make several of her previous trouser suits and mentioned to someone at Art Fund an idea about going armed with a Sharpie, collecting as many film industry glitterati signatures as she could. “Then I knew I had to do it but I did think, ‘what if no one will do it and I just end up with a couple of signatures and a bare suit?’”
Of course, that wasn’t the case. I’m speaking to Powell at Phillips, the Mayfair auction house hosting an online auction of the now-famous suit, which closes at 5pm tomorrow. Thanks to donations from the Luma Foundation, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund, the Linbury Trust and contributions from in excess of 4,500 individual donors, more than £2.6million has already been raised towards the target, and Powell is hoping her suit will make a significant dent in helping meet the balance.
The dream scenario is that a generous buyer donates the suit to a museum in the UK. It has now been worn not only to those two major awards ceremonies and after parties, but to the Critics’ Circle Awards (where she launched the idea in her acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award) and on the front row at Pam Hogg’s London Fashion Week show.
Just before we meet, Tilda Swinton – part of the close knit group of friends that remains dedicated to preserving Jarman’s legacy – has dropped in to add her signature. Not that there’s much space left. More than 100 people have signed the suit, from Oscar winners including Joaquin Phoenix, Brad Pitt, Renée Zellweger and Laura Dern to unsung film heroes.
“There wasn’t one person who said no. It gave me such a purpose to being there, apart from waiting to lose,” remembers Powell.
“I’d even ask people I saw in the loo. I met a lot more people than I would usually have done. I met filmmakers and documentary makers, even sound editors who I’d never have conversations with usually.”
The idea of bringing back the autograph – in an era when the selfie reigns as the “I’ve met a celebrity” gold standard – has brought back childhood memories for Powell. “I was in the shower this morning and I remembered that as a child in the Sixties I was obsessed with Top of the Pops. My grandfather was a fireman during the war but in his later years he was a fireman at the BBC. He’d take my autograph book and go knocking on dressing room doors to get autographs for me. I had Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Sandie Shaw, the Bee Gees. All these people were in my little pink book. I’ve lost it along the way somewhere, but here I am doing it again 50 years later and getting the same thrill.” Powell knows that Jarman would have loved the project. “Everyone who worked with Derek loved him. He was generous, kind, funny, but also hugely inspirational and talented. He took huge risks by employing so many young people. Caravaggio was my first film – I was only 25 and so was Tilda. We’re all eternally grateful to him for giving us that break but so much inspiration and love, too. The most moving part of all of this is that it’s for Derek, no one else. This is a big thank you. He’d have had huge fun with it.”
For more information and to donate to the campaign, visit phillips.com and artfund.org/ prospect