“I THINK THE CLOTHES IN CASINO DO WHAT THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO DO: THEY TELL A STORY.”

Robert De Niro’s wardrobe in the film Casino was designed by Rita Ryack, a veteran of star-studded movies. Here she tells us about her behind-the-scenes work on the costumes.

L’ÉTIQUETTE. How did you end up working on Casino?

RITA RYACK. I had already worked with Martin Scorsese on After Hours in the mid80s. We had a great time, and I think Martin remembered our collaboration fondly. He told me about the Casino project very early on, in 1992, three years before it actually came out. As soon as our conversation was over, I began thinking about Robert’s wardrobe..

É. Had you worked with Robert De Niro

before?

RR. Yes, on three movies, Cape Fear, Once Upon a Time in the Bronx and Mad Dog and Glory, so we’d done one feature film about the Mafia. I knew his measurements, tastes and

preferences. That saved me time. I started shopping around for fabrics, tapping into the same networks I’d used for the mobsters’ costumes in Mad Dog and Glory. I already knew where to find the right shirt collars and vintage suits, especially the sharkskin fabrics. Having that head start saved me because I ended up working on two jobs at the same time, Casino and Apollo 13. Both movies were coming out of the same studio, and they were really stressed out. They didn’t believe I could make it work. For the first five weeks, I was working on both films, and it turned out just fine.

É. How did you start putting the outfits

together?

RR. The first thing Robert and I did was head down to Florida and meet Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, the man who inspired the character of Sam “Ace” Rothstein. It’s crucial to have a clear reference point, a specific inspiration. When we made Once Upon a Time in the Bronx, Bob played a bus driver, so we got hold of a real driver and had him come in to a fitting and make sure the details were right. In Florida, Frank showed us his closet. It was spectacular. He really liked to dress up. His closets were chock-a-block with tailormade suits and shoes. Frank didn’t like his shoes to be scuffed, and he’d discovered that you can remove the scuffs from patent leather, so all of his shoes were patent leather. He shared little secrets like that with me. And he also let me borrow a big collection of ties, shirts and suits.

É. Which you then had copied.

RR. That’s right, we didn’t use Frank’s suits or shirts, but we remade them to fit Robert’s physique. It was all done at our Las Vegas studio, in an old warehouse that was pretty shabby. Our two tailors were wonderful. One of them worked for Universal. He was 90 years old and still ran the studio’s sewing workshop. He had made costumes for some legendary movie stars like Douglas Fairbanks and Elvis Presley. The other guy was Vincent Zullo, a New York tailor whom I worked with for years. He was also magic. We went to Anto, the shirtmaker that Frank used himself, for the shirts. Robert likes things to be as authentic as possible, so he was delighted that we could go straight to the source. Anto also made the ties. They’d found this really practical double-sided fabric and would cut the shirt out of the matte side of the fabric and the monochrome ties from the shiny side. Perfect. We also worked with brands like Sulka for the silk robes, Johnston & Murphy for the footwear and Turnbull & Asser for the knit ties. We picked up some garments at Dunhill, too. And we went to some flashy places in Hollywood, like Ted Lapidus and Bijan. Naturally, we also looked for a lot of vintage pieces. We found a pair of pants at the Salvation Army, as well as some white shoes – a bit golf-like and very cheap. During the process of creating a character’s wardrobe, I always wonder what that person would have been exposed to. What cultural images would they have seen? What movies or series might have made an impression on

them? I thought of Miami Vice, and I searched for very inexpensive clothes with that vibe. I managed to find some close-fitting printed nylon shirts. Robert tried them on, and they looked really good. I didn’t expect them to work so well. There’s something about the way Robert wears clothes – it’s pretty crazy. It doesn’t matter how cheap or expensive something is, he always looks like his outfit cost a million dollars.

É. How were the fittings?

RR. They took forever, but Robert has the patience to work his way through endless piles of clothes, trying everything on, just to see the little differences in proportions and accessories. I’ve done seven films with him, in all, and he’s blown me away like that every time. É. Colors, and the way they’re combined, play a big role in Ace’s costumes. How did you choose them?

RR. We went up to the rooftop of a Los Angeles hotel at the magic hour just before sunset – Robert, Martin, me and John Dunn, the other costume designer who outfitted the women in the cast. We took piles of clothes with us and had Robert model them. It was immediately obvious that bright colors really suited him; they didn’t look at all cartoonish. Pink, for instance, looked wonderful. I’d found some great pink pieces at Turnbull & Asser. The traditional English gentleman’s wardrobe has always had a lot of pink in it. I also love the jacket he’s got on when he’s sitting on the bench in his kitchen. I don’t even know how to describe the color. Terracotta? It reminds me of cheddar cheese or a honeycomb. But the use of color wasn’t gratuitous; it has meaning in the story. It’s a way for Ace to stand out in the casino. He’s not really part of the Mafia. He isn’t Italian. He has his own ideas about how the establishment should be managed. Ace wants to be conspicuous. That’s what the lurid colors of his suits are saying.

É. So once shooting began, the hardest

part was already over?

RR. There was only one last-minute purchase: the bright red jacket he wears toward the end of the film, in the nightclub, with a navy blue shirt, tie and pants. I found it in one of the stores inside the casino where we were filming.

É. Did you have an exact idea of the clothes you wanted Robert to wear in each scene?

RR. I work a lot on gut instinct. I never sit down to make sketches because you don’t know what’s going to happen when you’re trying things out with the actor. Sometimes what you’d planned doesn’t work at all, yet something really unlikely turns out to be perfect. Before each day of filming, Robert, Martin, John and I would get together and decide on the outfits for the following day’s scenes. That was the crucial moment.

É. Beyond their aesthetics, how did you make the costumes support the storyline?

RR. This might sound pretentious, but I think the clothes in Casino do what they’re supposed to do: they tell a story. There’s an evolution between the beginning and the end of the film. Everything gets a little fractured and crazy in the story, and the colors Robert wears reflect that. He starts out in nice dark suits in the casino, then he gets into more and more flamboyant shades, up until the famous salmon pink jacket he’s in when his car blows up. There’s an emotional and mental arc defined by the colors he wears.

É. We heard that the costume budget

was colossal.

RR. I know there are rumors that we had a million dollars to spend on wardrobe. That’s not true. No costume designer has ever had a million dollars for costumes; no one would ever pay that much money. The producers signed off on a $500,000 budget. Then John and I had to make it work, because you know, when Martin or Robert asks for something, you make sure you get it for them. So, yes, we had gone way over budget by the end of filming, but we didn’t hit the million mark.

É. When Casino was released, what

impact did the clothes have?

RR. I remember, not long afterward, seeing Mel Gibson on the cover of a magazine in a white jacket, white shirt and white tie. That outfit was straight from the movie. I also came across sharkskin suits in some stores, which wasn’t something you would have seen before. Anto, the shirtmaker, started getting a lot of orders for tone-on-tone shirts and ties. They did very well after that movie.

É. Why do you think you weren’t nomi

nated for an Oscar?

RR. You tell me!

Interview by G.B.