Phantom Threads

February 10, 2025

Words by CATHERINE MARTIN/ARIANNE PHILLIPS
Introduction by JEREMY LANGMEAD

The highly decorated costume and production designer behind opulent visual feasts such Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge and Elvis talks Arianne Phillips through her career, ChatGPT, parental inspiration and her nemesis on set.

Catherine Martin is a true polymath. She has an extraordinary ability to bring to life, through her award-winning costume, production and set designs, the vision of her partner in life, and in film, the director Baz Luhrmann. Together they had created visually spectacular and compelling storytelling through movies such as Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby and Elvis.

Catherine has had 78 awards nominations and 62 wins, including four Oscars. In fact, she has been nominated for and twice won two Oscars in the same year – costume and production design for Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby. The only woman to do so since Edith Head in the 1950s.

Here Catherine, with her trademark modesty and good humour, talks to Arianne about balancing high creativity and daunting logistics, setting boundaries when working with your partner, and raising children to researching Joan of Arc.

AP: Hi Catherine. So great to meet you. We’ve never actually met.

CM: I know. And I’m a huge fan of what you do. I went and saw all the Madonna shows and saw what you did for her, and I just thought, ‘Wow!’

AP: Thank you. Well what I love about you is that you’re a multi-hyphenate – not just a costume designer, production designer, producer, but you’re also an entrepreneur, and you do interiors. I’m so just thrilled to hear about your process and what it’s like having your life partner also be your creative partner. And when do you have time for all this? You also have a family. How did this multi-hyphenate life begin?

CM: Thank you. Well when I was still studying at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts) in Sydney I worked on set design and costume projects for the theatre. And so when I met Baz, who had graduated from NIDA just before me, I’d already had experience of both when we started working together on Strictly Ballroom (1992).

catherine martin, elvis, moulin rouge, romeo + juliet, the great gatsby — *Strictly Ballroom*, 1992. RANK/Alamy

AP: A lot of people don’t understand the tradition that in the theatre, set designers will often also design the costumes. There’s a real fluid flow in theatre and in opera. What I love about your trajectory is that both you and Baz have this real theatre foundation, and it really makes sense that you’re able to continue this type of fluid work between sets and costumes in the films you create.

CM: Absolutely. Baz always says that in film a lot of the time sets are the costumes because 30% of a film is in close-up. And then if you have a big crowd scene, well, the set is kind of obliterated by the crowd – and it is they who create the atmosphere or the milieu in which the story is told. So he’s very focused on everything visual. You know, every single detail he will have a perspective on. Baz is a visualist, and he will have a strong idea of how he wants something to look. He’ll rip pictures out of magazines; he will draw little scribbly pictures that are very helpful; he is now, very scarily, starting to talk to Chat GPT. And what I think is incredible is that I can’t get good pictures out of Chat GPT, but he talks to it like a director and corrects it and then the images actually make sense. I just go, how can you make such great pictures? I’m meant to be somebody who’s a designer and I can barely get it to give me a cat that doesn’t have 6 legs.

AP: It’s a testament to his verbal acumen that he’s able to express aesthetics, because that is a gift and a skill. In my experience most directors are completely unable to express aesthetics, which is so crazy.

CM: He has a really strong aesthetic, obviously. But at the same time, what makes it great is he’s not like, you know, Charlie Chaplin, the great dictator, with a big ball running around his office. He’s actually engaging with you as a true collaborator: ‘now how do we work this out?’ And he doesn’t do it just with design. He’ll do it with music. He’ll do it with movement. He’ll do it with the actors. So what’s rewarding is you’re not just another cog in the wheel. You feel connected to all the other people in the team.

AP: You both have such a strong aesthetic and visual identity, I wonder what movies you loved or that had inspired you when you first started out creating your own stories?

CM: I think the movie that absolutely struck me the most when I was a kid was The Wizard of Oz. I think I first saw it when I was 10. My dad is a huge movie buff. Even though he’s a professor of French, and a specialist in 18th-century French literature, he’s just loved the movies from when he was a child. He was actually a child actor. And he would tell you all about how they did everything – like when someone’s telling you about the special camera they invented for Snow White, the multi-plane camera so that it felt like you were moving through time and space. When you’re a child, it sometimes takes the magic out of it all, but noone could take the magic out, or the fear I had, from those monkeys. I still find them terrifying. And I really wanted those red shoes with the sparkles on them. And I also liked the pale blue socks she wore with the red shoes. I thought it was so ugly, but so good. And this is now very politically incorrect, but you must remember that I was a child when I first saw it, but I was in awe of Gone With the Wind. It was just so enormous and epic.

AP: The scale, magic and colours of those epic movies are all reflected in your work. As is the transportive nature of those films – whether it’s through Moulin Rouge or The Great Gatsby. I’m just curious about when you are in the early development phase with your films, and you and Baz have privilege of being partners in life, as well as in film, do you discuss your work at the dinner table… how you come together with your early ideas about the films that you’re deciding to make?

CM: It has to be relatively disciplined because, ultimately, Baz is the decision maker. And we’ve had to learn to have a process for him to discover what he wants to actually make the next time – because he commits hook, line and sinker. So every time we go into that moment he needs to go off on a kind of quest to find that idea that he wants to commit to. And then there’s a process of him telling the larger group the story. So I would be one of the first people to hear that story. And then he would tell our other colleagues. And then he might start talking to the casting director about it in order to start fleshing out the story for himself.

Baz is in a writing mode at the moment, and that’s a very specific and singular thing for him. And whilst he’s on that journey I will do external kind of research. His next project is Jeanne D’Arc and I will obviously read the book on which the story is based and generally research around the subject. We’ve already done some field trips to see various people and places and museums. In fact, I’m going to Rouen tomorrow to see where poor Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. But in earnest, I’ll be invited into the design process in a quite formal way

AP: I get it.

CM: So, yes, we talk about everything and anything. But when you work and live together, you kind of have to have systems in order to create the space for the other person to not trample them creatively. So I know if Baz has a really good chance to brief me, he’ll give me the space and time to give it my best shot, then I’ll be ready to present it to a group. And presenting can be really traumatising because when you present something you actually see all the flaws that were not real to you when you were just sitting in your room by yourself, or with your immediate team, or whatever. But what’s great is that it doesn’t matter if you fail. You just have to go back to the drawing board and give it your best.

AP: Catherine, when you speak about presenting to the group, it’s reminiscent of what we do in theatre, right, or in opera when you present. And I love that process, that structure, because it is exactly what you say: when you do present it’s like reading your writing out loud. Then you understand, ‘oh, I need to work on this more, this doesn’t work’, but that is such a gift. Having done a little bit of opera and a little bit of theatre, I found that that process is nerve wracking, but wholly rewarding. And I am jealous that you have this partnership and this structure that you’re able to do that with your film work. That’s fabulous.

CM: The big advantage with theatre is that you effectively have 100 opening nights, instead of one. Whereas someone could be wearing a terrible wig on opening night in the play, for whatever reason, you can fix it in the run. Once you’ve shot something, you can never change it. Perhaps with visual effects, but costume fixes are a lower priority in that budget. Most people would rather fix a stunt or a building than a costume or a wig.

AP: Yeah, that’s right.

CM: I’m always, like, ‘can you close the shirt? And what about the fact that the sock’s not long enough going up into the trunk?’ I can see these are the things that as costume designers drive us crazy, right? And, oh my god, I wish there was a special erase button for bad shoes. Why is that person with the bad shoes right in the front? Can you put good shoes on?

AP: Ha. Always. How do you manage your team when you are designing sets and costumes, and you’re also a producer…how does that work?

CM: Well, it takes me nearly to the brink of a nervous breakdown. And in fact, although it was only partially to do with work, but a combination of COVID, two children in their late teens, my mother breaking a hip, and so much to do that I actually did have a bit of a nervous breakdown…

AP: I’m sorry to hear that.

CM: It was just a lot. So, you know, Elvis wasn’t a perfect journey because I really did become extremely depressed at one point. And you don’t realise that that’s happening to you. It’s just like the oxygen’s being taken out of the room in tiny little gulps. And one of our children was having, you know, suicidal ideation. They’re totally fine now. That’s the thing about children, that one minute it’s like the end of the world for them, and then they turn around and say ‘that’s over now, I’m good’. I wish I was as resilient. So it’s not perfect, you know, all the time. And I think that was just a really tough period. And I underestimated too how much work Elvis would be. Initially I thought the movie might be a bit of a psychological rest because we were not world-building from scratch, we were recreating one. But, of course, it wasn’t like that at all. It was world-building and there were around 9,000 complete outfits. And sometimes I just felt like I was in Indiana Jones and there was a giant ball coming behind me. And I kept thinking ‘how can there be 105 speaking parts?’ And I was a producer. And I would go to my fellow producers and colleague, Schulyer Weiss – because his creative area is casting – can you cut some of these parts because there aren’t enough clothes in the world!

AP: Wow, I can imagine. This Bob Dylan movie I just did, A Complete Unknown, had 120 speaking parts. It’s a lot.

CM: It is. Since Elvis, however, things have changed so much. Both kids are at university; they have their own lives; one is living at home at the moment, and the other one lives three minutes away in an apartment. And it means I’ve just had more creative opportunity this year in a way that I haven’t before because, you know, I’m now less tied to the children. I love my children. Best thing I ever did. But you go through this weird seesaw moment where you go, ‘oh my god, they’re leaving home. The whole meaning of my life has been removed. This is a disaster’. And then you go, ‘oh, freedom, freedom!’

AP: Ha. Because, as you’ve alluded to, there are so many logistics to plan and solve in your work with Baz, how are you able to separate the vision and the practicals when planning a project so that one doesn’t hamper the other?

CM: I think you have to have the idea first. You have to have the concept, the idea, and then you have to work out how to do it. Obviously, when people whose names shall remain nameless – but their name might rhyme with Faz – ask you to build the Eiffel Tower the day before the Eiffel Tower has to be there, maybe you do get a little tight in the chest. But you’ve got to go: ‘Okay. Now you may not be able to build the Eiffel Tower, but what are they actually saying to you? What do they actually want? What does the Eiffel Tower symbolise? What does it mean? Why do we need it? Okay, now what’s the solution?’ It’s the same thing in costumes all the time. Actors might not like something they’re wearing. And, usually, for a very good reason, but it might not be the reason they’re saying. You have to sort of get into the head of the person to understand what they’re really trying to tell you because then you can find a solution that satisfies the problem.

AP: Yes. It’s solving a riddle. And I think that is one of the crazy masochistic reasons why I keep working on another film is that it is that riddle, that creative riddle, between practicality and creativity – and how the two shall meet. It can take a lot out of you and also give you a lot of gifts, too, in the end.

CM: This is true. I have been criticised for saying this in the past, but I believe that what separates a designer from an artist is that a designer is problem solving. A design is about a situation that you’re presented with: whether it’s a script, a person or wet weather. And a director who’s explaining to you how they want the movie to be, and an actor that has certain views on their character, and your job is to thread the needle between all those people.

AP: Good point. What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced in all the films that you’ve worked on? Is there a particular scene?

CM: I think I was really nervous before filming the ‘68 special in Elvis because I saw all the clothes and it just really didn’t come together until I saw everyone in hair and makeup. I just thought, ‘what is this?’ It just felt so discombobulated. But then with hair and makeup it all came together. Hair and make-up is a really unsung department. They really can save you. Good hair and makeup is just invaluable for creating character and mood and bringing everything together. You know, that was pretty terrifying. And it’s what we shot first on Elvis.

AP: You pulled it off. So great.

CM: Thank you. And when you think that was entirely shot in Australia. And it’s so under the skin, you can’t see it. So beautifully done. Yes, it was just that first day shooting the ‘68 special that felt like we had so much to lose. Ultimately, with all the more complex scenes we film, I just always feel so grateful when nothing explodes, no one gets hurt, the clothes stay on everyone, the work is good, everyone’s happy, the props worked… props are always my nemesis. Not so much the set dressing props – I love set dressing – it’s just those props that are handled by actors. It’s so interesting because someone like Leonardo DiCaprio or Hugh Jackman can get the worst prop, the prop that doesn’t work, and you’ll say to them, ‘can you just make this work? I’m so sorry this is a disaster. And I’m just terrible’. And they can, you know, they can basically bring an inanimate object to life. And then there are other people who can’t sign a check. And it doesn’t matter how many pens you bring them, just no pen works. You can have 7,000 pens and I can still hear my name being called over the radio to come to set.

AP: The same with a wardrobe malfunction, too. Some people are just able to handle it. When you’re working with a brilliant performer they know instinctively how to create the illusion. We’re all creating illusions. And Catherine, you are a master of this, your work is extraordinary.

Words by CATHERINE MARTIN/ARIANNE PHILLIPS
Introduction by JEREMY LANGMEAD
A Single Man / Once Upon A Time in…Hollywood / Joker: Folie à Deux / A Complete Unknown

ARIANNE PHILLIPS

November 15, 2024

Words by JEREMY LANGMEAD

Hollywood Authentic’s correspondent, costumier Arianne Phillips, has the tables turned as she looks back at her own illustrious career crafting clothing for films including A Single Man, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Joker: Folie à Deux and the upcoming Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Arianne Phillips is one of the most prolific, talented and versatile costume designers working in the industry today. She has won acclaim and award nominations for everything from giant commercial blockbusters to influential art-house movies, iconic music videos to Madonna’s concert tours, and worked with an enviable array of directors and actors. Arianne is also a favourite of the fashion world: her costume designs for Tom Ford’s A Single Man, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and Madonna’s W.E. have inspired designers and led to her working with Prada and designing menswear collections alongside Matthew Vaughn for the retailer Mr Porter. She’s also responsible for the costumes of two of the most anticipated films of the moment: Joker: Folie à Deux by Todd Phillips and A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s forthcoming Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. So, it seemed the right time to put Hollywood Authentic’s costume correspondent under the spotlight for a change.

JL: When we worked together on a 2019 documentary that Lenny Kravitz and I executive produced about you – Arianne Phillips: Dressing the Part – we described you as the misfit rebel who became a powerful creative force in both the movie and fashion industries. How did that misfit rebel successfully succeed in two notoriously competitive industries?

AP: Well, let’s see, how did it all begin? It’s not a linear journey. My mom had me when she was 20 and my dad was 24, and my sister and I, we just went on this fabulous adventure with them. In California we were exposed to a lot of art, music, writing and poetry, and I think that was what really stayed with me. I was in an atmosphere of creativity and experimentation. I enjoy taking the path unknown. Because I’ve just worked on the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, I keep referring to his songs, and the lyrics ‘The times they are a-changin’’ resonate with me. I’ve always just kept taking risks.

JL: Did you study costume at college?

AP: I wanted to go to college to learn art. And then I quickly got distracted and moved to New York. I was obsessed with British street culture and fashion, and the magazines. I got really great advice from a very respected fashion photographer, Arthur Elgort, who I had the pleasure to meet during those early days. He said, ‘You know, I can’t do much for you. I’m established. Come up with your own way, find like-minded people and collaborate with your friends.’ So I really dug into that, and I met so many wonderful people in New York, as you do as a young person, and I think that was the thing that really propelled me into this kind of multi-discipline career. Until then, if you loved fashion you were either a costume designer for a film, or a stylist for musicians, or you were a fashion editor. Those things did not cross over. But I think I was the new kid who never really wanted to belong to one group, never felt quite comfortable in any of those worlds full-time. And then the connecting thread for me, ultimately, was storytelling through costume, through clothing…creating characters. And I was lucky enough to get to do that, quite early on, with so many great artists – Lenny and Madonna and Courtney Love.

A Single Man, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead — *A Single Man*, 2009. The Weinstein Company/Alamy

JL: So it was always creativity, new challenges and inspiring collaborators that drove you forward at this stage?

AP: Yes. The financial aspect of it never really factored in. I knew that if I went down the commercial route – which is easy; I watched a lot of colleagues end up doing commercials for TV and stuff – then I would get addicted to that comfortable lifestyle. I mean, it’s worked out fine for me, but I always chose a project that would be unique. In the last film I worked on, I had 40 people in my department. The new film I’m about to start work on will have just me and two other people, with a budget of only $30,000 for costumes for the whole movie. The average budget for costumes on a big movie is a million plus. And last year I did an off-Broadway play where it was just me and one other person. This approach is crucial to how I try to keep my own self relevant to myself; to keep me a little bit hungry, to keep it real.

JL: I was talking to the actor Dan Levy recently and he was describing how intimidating the first days on set shooting can be when you suddenly have to start working closely with huge teams of people you’ve perhaps never met before. How do you cope with that… especially as you have to have quite an intimate relationship with some of those characters very quickly because you’re dressing them?

AP: It is crazy, at least with actors, because we’re the only department that’s like, ‘Nice to meet you, can you take your clothes off please?’ It is very intimate. But it’s really about building trust, listening to the people you’re working with. It was so hard during Covid when we were masked. And what I ended up doing when filming Don’t Worry Darling was requesting Zoom calls with the actors first so I could get to know them, and read them. Then by the time they came in to the room and we were all masked you already had an understanding.

JL: Do you still get nervous?

AP: I still get butterflies. I can’t sleep the first night before shooting. The night before I was due to work with Madonna for the first time, I was a wreck. I didn’t sleep at all. But at the same time I still get so excited with what I get to do. And still recognise how lucky I am being out there working with such creative people; being in Paris with Madonna and going out to dinner with Jean Paul Gaultier, receiving three Oscar nominations. I mean, there’s just so many ‘pinch me’ moments.

JL: Which was the first mainstream movie you got work on?

AP: My first big break was doing The Crow [Alex Proyas’ 1994 thriller] but I couldn’t embrace that as a success because it was a tragedy. It was Brandon Lee [who was accidentally killed on set] who had invited me to work on it. So the joy of it was completely demolished. Then I did a small film for HBO directed by Christopher Guest called Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and then I worked on Tank Girl. But I would say that The People vs. Larry Flynt was my first legitimate character-driven, non-genre film. I felt like I could earn my parents’ respect because I had seen Milos Forman films with them back in the day. So that was a seminal moment for me.

Kingsman: The Secret Service, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead — *Kingsman: The Secret Service*, 2014. 20th Century Studios/Alamy

JL: When we first met you were working on the Kingsman movies with Matthew Vaughan and I remember coming on set and I was gobsmacked at the number of lead actors you had to work with, extras you had to dress, the multitude of different costume trucks on the lot. The logistics you had to manage were extraordinary.

AP: I dare say Matthew Vaughan is unique in terms of logistics. I mean, he has a nimble quality in the way that he directs. So he directs these large-budget films, but with the attitude and the nimbleness of an independent filmmaker. So nothing’s too challenging, nothing’s not doable. Both of those first two Kingsman movies were really, really logistically challenging, and they took a toll on all of us who were making the films, because the thing about Matthew, and I think the reason why he’s such a brilliant filmmaker, is he takes so many risks and he does kind of the unthinkable.

JL: You not only had to create the costumes for the movie, but you also knew they were going to become the first of a legitimate menswear collection that would be sold in stores. And that Kingsman clothing brand still exists today. Is it easier creating costumes that will end up in a storage depot or ones that you know will live on in the real world?

AP: I was really excited about that challenge. It’s quite sad at the end of a movie when you put the costumes away in a box. I don’t keep the costumes, the film studio does. You put them in a box, they go into storage and you usually never see them again. There are a number of film studios that once you wrap a film, they try to recoup money and so sell off costumes. And it’s so sad. There’s also the horrible situation, which has happened to many of my colleagues, and to me a couple of times, where the film studio’s marketing department makes a separate deal with some mass fast-fashion brand and creates a version of the costumes that has nothing to do with you. And it looks like crap. So I thought Kingsman was like a litmus test for me. I kind of felt, not that it was altruistic, but that if I can make this happen, it could be a little bit of a benchmark for my colleagues.

JL: Are there no proper costume archives?

AP: Well, you know, in different ways. Madonna has a really impressive archive, and I’m sure people have seen the Céline Dion documentary in which she shows the camera crew around her archive. Madonna’s is even bigger. So you have artists who have personal archives. And then you have ones like those at the V&A or the Metropolitan Museum. They have fashion archives where they have certain film pieces that they feel are culturally relevant, but they’re not necessarily pure costume archives. You also have a lot of private collectors. And there’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. They’ve started a really beautiful costume archive. I actually have donated bits and bobs that I have been allowed to keep by producers on certain films.

A Complete Unknown, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead — *A Complete Unknown*, 2024. Searchlight Pictures/Alamy

JL: Well let’s jump to two new movies with extraordinary costumes but in very different ways. A Complete Unknown tells the story leading up to Bob Dylan’s first appearance with electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. It’s directed by James Mangold with whom you also worked on Walk the Line nearly 20 years ago. Is it easier or harder creating costumes for a real character who is known and instantly recognisable or a fictional one?

AP: Well, being a massive Bob Dylan fan – he is part of the soundtrack of my childhood – I just felt what was needed in my bones. I started reading biographies about him and those who were in his circle, and I learned a lot. Our film is very specific; set over a period of four years at the beginning of the 1960s, it’s about the making of Bob Dylan, the poet, the icon, the rock star that we know today. It’s like his origin story. Personal research is more challenging. It’s like being a detective. The best thing for me as a designer is what I call the character arc. In this film it’s very succinct. The changes he went through from 1961 to ’63 to ’65, they’re very definitive.

The hardest thing to get right for period films is denim because it changes so much and often doesn’t exist in that form anymore. Bob wore denim throughout his life and to this day. It was clear from early research he wore predominantly Levi’s. Luckily, I have worked with Levi’s previously and know the wonderful people that work there . That was the first call I made a couple years ago when I started researching for the film. I reached out to them asking if they could help me identify what Bob was wearing, denim-wise. So together with the help of the team in the archive and design dept. at Levi’s I was able to create Bob’s denim story. First you see him early on in “worker” style “carpenter” jeans like Woody Guthrie wore, and then in 1962/63 he starts wearing the more recognizable Levi’s. His girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo, who’s on the cover of the album The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan, make a denim insert for his jeans so that they would fit around his boots because he always wore boots. So, in 1963, Bob Dylan wore the first flares. And then he ended up wearing very skinny jeans in 1965, which Levi’s recreated for us. Bob’s denim jeans and boots visually inform and express his style evolution in ‘becoming’ the Bob Dylan we know today.

Walk the Line, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead — *Walk the Line*, 2005. 20th Century Fox/Alamy

JL: When you’re in the process, do you know that you’ve truly caught the character in the hair, make-up, and costume?

AP: Well, I can’t speak for Timmy [Chalamet, playing Dylan]. But I can say two moments when we first thought it was there. I did many fittings with Timmy – he has almost 70 changes in the film – but I would say the first day he brought a guitar to the fitting was really helpful to see how he would stand with the instrument. And when I put sunglasses on him in a fitting, that was very exciting. And then when we got closer to shooting and Jamie Leigh McIntosh, who’s the hair designer, was working on the wig – he wasn’t always wearing a wig; he also used his own hair – but that was a moment.

Timmy is remarkable. I mean he had to learn the lyrics for 40 or 50 songs for our film. So when he would come to the fittings he was very comfortable. You know, he would sing and play the guitar. And that really helped me a lot. And we played the music and we kind of went into this sacred space. Fittings are when the character comes alive.

JL: You created the costumes for Joker: Folie à Deux, which reunites you with Joaquin Phoenix who you worked with on Walk the Line. How do you bring alive such visually compelling characters as Joker and Harley Quinn?

AP: I was the new kid on the block with that movie. The first Todd Phillips’ Joker was designed by the brilliant Mark Bridges, a friend of mine. So I had the great good fortune to build on what he had created. On the first day when I was working with Joaquin he came in and said, ‘Well, I guess we only work on movies with music in them.’ It’s not a musical, but there are a lot of songs. Music is intrinsic to the way this story moves. It was lovely to be reunited with him in such a different role. I admire him so much and I love him as a person. Just being around Joaquin, it’s like you want some of that to rub off on you. He’s brilliant. He’s very generous and kind. He would hate that I’m saying this. He’s just very respectful, and he’s committed.

JL: And, of course, you also worked with Lady Gaga. Is it easier or harder working with someone who has a strong sense of style, clothes and costume drama herself?

AP: I have to say that working with Stefani – it’s hard for me to call her Lady Gaga because it sounds weird – will be one of my career highlights. She’s so generous, so committed, so willing… and so much fun. And she was a new kid on the block, too, for this movie and so we bonded over that. We did multiple fittings and the journey to finding her character in the costumes was just so rewarding. It helped that she is so used to developing characters on stage, that she’s so smart, and she has such a great level of references that we were able to riff on a higher level than with most people. She was 100 per cent committed. I mean, Lady Gaga was left at the door. This was all about Stefani, the actress. She was everything that I could hope for when I walk into a fitting room with an actor. She was willing to try, and open to, everything. And also had great ideas of her own.

JL: Your final question is a tough one. If you were stranded on a desert island with only one of the films you’ve worked on, which would it be?

AP: Wow. That’s impossible. It depends on what my mood is at the time. But W.E. [the 2011 film about Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor directed by Madonna, for which Arianne was nominated for an Academy Award]. I’m very proud of that movie. Working with Madonna as a director is my favourite way to work with her because she’s just such a great partner and just so engaging. Otherwise probably A Complete Unknown and A Single Man are the follow-ups – A Single Man is a beautiful, beautiful film that I think is also an important one. And also, I hope, a film I’ve yet to make.

W.E., Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead — *W.E.*, 2011. StudioCanal UK/Alamy

Words by JEREMY LANGMEAD
A Single Man / Once Upon A Time in…Hollywood / Joker: Folie à Deux / A Complete Unknown

Phantom Threads

ALBERT WOLSKY

August 28, 2024

Words by ARIANNE PHILLIPS
As told to JEREMY LANGMEAD

Esteemed costume designer and Hollywood Authentic correspondent Arianne Phillips sits down with a man she describes as ‘the costume designers’ costume designer’, Albert Wolsky, to discuss swapping travel agenting for tailoring, working with legendary directors, dressing Diane Keaton and the beautiful mistakes of the classic musical Grease.

Albert Wolsky, 93, is a great artist with a prolific and profound career that has continued to influence and inform culture across multiple generations. His work spans every genre of filmmaking: drama, comedy, science fiction, period, contemporary, musicals, thrillers. From Grease to Galaxy Quest, All That Jazz to The Jazz Singer, Down and Out in Beverly Hills to Star 80, Manhattan to Sophie’s Choice, Across the Universe to The Manchurian Candidate, Revolutionary Road to Road to Perdition, and Birdman to Bugsy, Wolsky has worked with the most influential directors of the last century and this. He has close to 100 films to his credit.

Albert Wolsky, Arianne Phillips, Bugsy, Grease, Lenny, Road to Perdition

I have a deep respect, reverence and admiration for Mr Wolsky. I’m in awe of his artistry, his vision, his subtle and bold choices, the worlds he creates, and his layered storytelling. He is truly an icon for me and many of our colleagues.

Albert is also incredibly humble, kind, funny, warm and generous. Preparing for our conversation was nerve-wracking, to say the least – where would I begin? How would I be able to do justice to his more than 50-year career? In the end, our hours-long conversation flew by. Albert shared many wonderful stories and memories. I am thrilled to be able to share a part of that conversation with you here.

AP: Thank you so much for giving us your time.

AW: Not at all. You’ve made me reflect, and think back, which I don’t often do, so it’s been very interesting.

AP: And Albert, as you know, we all like to discuss how we can promote or elevate, even celebrate, the art of costume design and stories such as this help us to do that.

AW: Absolutely. It’s very important. Because otherwise you get totally ignored. Even today it’s always a fight to get your name out there otherwise you get swept under the carpet.

AP: I’m so grateful that I got to talk to you today. You are a costume designer’s costume designer: humble, approachable, warm – and the benchmark that we all aspire to. When I was revisiting your resume I was intimidated because the films you have designed have been probably the most influential ones for me, personally. From Where’s Poppa (Carl Reiner, 1970), Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974) and Harry And Tonto (Paul Mazurksy, 1974)… all these films my parents dragged me to as a kid. And I was especially inspired by your collaborations with Mazurksy. You made 11 movies together…

AW: Well that was a gift. He is the only director I’ve worked with for that long – between 15 to 20 years. I’ve had influential directors – Bob Fosse, of course, and others – but for me Paul Mazurksy was the benchmark. [During his career, Mazursky, who died in 2014, received five Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.]

AP: So Albert, how did you get into a career as a costume designer. You came into it quite late I think?

AW: Yeah, I was 30. I never knew what I wanted to do. And I kept sort of wandering along and got through college and then I was drafted, so I went in the army for two years. When I came out I joined my father who was a travel agent. We worked together in New York City for around five years. We got along really well, but I came to realise that he was doing exactly what he wanted to do. He loved it. And I wasn’t. I was getting more and more miserable to the point where I dreaded weekends because I had to come back to work on Monday. So I thought, well, I’ll have to go in and say, ‘I have to leave,’ and he’s going to say, ‘For what?’ And I would need to say something. And because I liked fashion and loved theatre, I thought why not combine the two? I’ll try to become a costume designer for the theatre. Movies hadn’t crossed my mind at that point.

My father was actually very supportive and so I started asking around to see if anyone would let me study under them. I was persistent and eventually someone suggested I should talk to the renowned Broadway costume designer Helene Pons. She was a designer, but she also ran a costume house, and had executed Cecil Beaton’s costume sketches for My Fair Lady in 1956. [Pons worked with everyone from Tallulah Bankhead to John Gielgud; and as well as My Fair Lady worked on original stage productions such as 1949’s Kiss Me Kate and 1955’s The Diary of Anne Frank.]

We met, I did her a favour with some flights she needed for a trip, and she offered me a job straight away. So I left the travel business on a Friday, and I started on a Monday with Helen Pons working on Camelot starring Richard Burton and Julie Andrews. And that was my beginning. For $100 a week, I helped run her studio and learned on the job. And subsequently got to work for and alongside some of Broadway’s most talented designers, directors and actors.

AP: What was the first production you did on your own?

AW: It was a play called Generation in 1965. It was the first time I got sole credit for costume design. And Henry Fonda was the star. And then sometime later I got a call from the costume designer Theoni V Aldredge [whose work included 1974’s The Great Gatsby, Ghostbusters and Addams Family Values] offering me a film. Assisting on a movie is probably a good idea, I thought, so I said, ‘When do you need me?’ She said, ‘Right away. And I don’t want you to assist. I want you to do it yourself as I can’t.’

It was the film version of one of my favourite books, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. The cast included Alan Arkin, Sondra Locke and Chuck McCann. Alan was a spiritual man; very nice, and he requested me for the next movie that he did. And so we’re off.

AP: How did you find the difference between theatre and movie costume design?

AW: I first noticed it with the fittings. You could always tell in those days whether an actor came from television or from the theatre by the way he looked in the mirror. A theatre actor would immediately start looking for the character. A movie actor would just pick clothes off the rack. The clothes weren’t him, they were just another costume. I try to avoid working that way. And I very rarely had to deal with that in my career.

One of my favourite people to work with in recent years was Jude Law when we were working on Sam Mendes’ film Road To Perdition in 2002. He really invested in time with the costume, hair and make-up teams. We experimented in many different ways for his character to dress and appear. And what we ended up with had nothing to do with what the person he was playing looked like originally. He was so involved with that. It doesn’t happen very often.

AP: So tell me about working on Lenny, the biographical film about the comedian Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman and directed by the legendary Bob Fosse.

AW: Fosse had done two movies, Sweet Charity, in Hollywood, and Cabaret, which he made in Europe. Fosse was not what you would call buddy buddy, he was serious. You never laughed a lot on set with Fosse, but he worked hard. He’d be the first one on set, moving things around, setting up all the camera shots. And he remembered everything. He had that kind of mind. But as far as influence with costumes, it was very free.

We decided we wouldn’t dress Hoffman like Lenny Bruce and after that he didn’t get too involved. I would present my ideas to him and he would say, well, maybe this, or he would say no. It went very smoothly. But he was a true perfectionist. I stepped up a level working for Fosse on Lenny and on All That Jazz.

AP: What do you think made you have such a successful career?

AW: You know, I was starting to reflect a little bit and I thought, I don’t consider myself so brilliant. So how did I do that? I don’t know. When you start out, you’re just glad you’re working. You don’t spend too much time contemplating how or why. But I think I always looked out for a good script, as it gives you ideas, and who the director was. I’m very director oriented. And I’d always hope it was a period piece because I found contemporary very difficult to do.

AP: How come?

AW: Difficult because it then becomes a thing of taste. The other person’s taste, a producer’s taste. There’s so much interference. There’s much less interference in period because they don’t quite know as much. And you can really push harder.

AP: Tell me more about working with Mazurksy?

AW: Oh, we knew each other from New York. And we first worked together on Harry and Tonto in 1974. It starred Art Carney, who won an Academy award for best actor. We worked mostly in New York; Paul preferred it there. Obviously for films such as Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) we were based in California.

Paul was very collaborative and would get me involved very early in the process. By the time we started rehearsal, I had had weeks of preparation. And that was a gift. It makes you a better designer, and it makes you able to give more to help the project. Paul was very open to ideas. And smart. What he didn’t know, he picked up very quickly. Being open is so important.

AP: Which other directors have you found collaborative to work with regarding the costume design?

AW: The last great director I worked with in that way, I would say, was Sam Mendes. Road To Perdition, which I mentioned already, with Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Daniel Craig, as well as Jude – about a mob enforcer in the Great Depression – was a very rewarding experience. Sam was great, a wonderful director.

On the first day of shooting Road to Perdition, there was a scene with 500 people coming out of a factory. And in the afternoon, a bread line of 300 people. That’s a lot of costumes. And as we were setting those scenes up, Sam’s assistant was watching and she came up to me and said: ‘Sam’s going to be so impressed.’ And I said, ‘Well if he doesn’t like them, fuck him.’ Later in the day I get a tug on the arm. It’s Sam. ‘It’s very nice,’ he says. ‘And I understand I have to like it.’

We worked together again on a big crowd costume scene in Revolutionary Road (2008) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. When DiCaprio is heading to his office in Manhattan from the suburbs of New York in the early 1960s, we had dozens of commuters in similar grey or beige suits and fedoras. Really, that scene was all about the hats.

But you see, you can discover my secret of how I handle some period things. It’s not the exactness of the period, but it’s what people did that helps me. The fact that everybody wore hats. Not every person wore hats then, but for that scene to look right and to tell the story, and to capture the mood, we put everyone in hats.

AP: It’s the thinking like that about costume design that’s important to share. It’s important for people to know what a costume designer does and thinks. It is not just pretty clothes. It’s about storytelling, and it’s about helping the story and helping the director to visualise that story. And if you feel you can help that, it’s a gift for you personally.

AW: Oh, yeah. I think it should always be a collaboration. And it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. I’m not worried about the credit. I’m worried about what we have, what do we need, what do we see, how do we help? And it’s such a joy when it works like that.

AP: Hats have played an important role in a few of your movies. Didn’t you work with Warren Beatty on Bugsy (1991)?

AW: Warren is a lovely man, very talented, but he’s not comfortable with anybody the first time. He has to work with them a lot before he trusts them. It was wonderful working with him and the director Barry Levinson. And then Annette Bening, who was just at the start of her career. She was very open and it was a joy to dress her. The only problem I ever had with Annette is that she never reacted when looking at herself in the costume in the mirror for the first time.

AP: Are you looking for some sort of reaction?

AW: She never said yes, or let’s just do it, or that’s okay. So I would think what’s missing; something’s missing. And then one day, while we were shooting, as she was walking towards the set and I was behind her, she stood straight and everything about her changed. She opened the door, was ready to act, and that changed the whole costume. It came alive. That was so moving to me, to watch. That’s what was missing at the fitting.

AP: It must have been interesting working with Diane Keaton, who has an amazing dress sense of her own?

AW: I worked with Diane on Manhattan with Woody Allen in 1979 alongside Meryl Streep and Mariel Hemingway. Diane was very influential on how her character looked; especially after Annie Hall had come out. At that point she was Allen’s girlfriend. I learned that Allen was never going to say no to any actor about how they wanted to dress for the role. If an actor wanted to wear a pajama top, that’s what they wore. Which didn’t always make it easy for me.

Diane always dresses as if she’s playing a role. Her whole personality is how she looks. When we filmed Crimes of the Heart together in 1986 (Bruce Beresford directed) alongside Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek, we were all staying in a resort out of town. Off-set, everyone was dressed down in the mornings except for Diane who would appear at breakfast in a big cape, hat, big cross, looking like a character from a different movie. The other two were so in awe of her. I liked her a lot. She was always in costume.

AP: And, of course, you did the costumes for Grease. Costumes that are still emulated and worn by generations who weren’t even born when the film was made in 1978.

AW: In the making of Grease (directed by Randal Kleiser), none of us who worked on it ever thought that it was going to become so iconic. We were just trying to do a good movie. As John Travolta said to me at one of these open-air screenings a few years ago, ‘Albert, do you realise we’re still talking about Grease?’ You know, its endurance and fashion influence is a total surprise; the fact that people now dress in character to go to watch the movie is amazing. It wasn’t what we imagined when making it. I don’t remember if I was trying to make a statement or what. I was just going by numbers. It wasn’t a big budget and the shooting was quite hectic. And everything, everything was off the cuff. The last number… well, we didn’t have a last number when we started the film. I think it was two weeks before they started rehearsing that we were given the script for that scene. But there it was and, all of a sudden, you had to get all the costumes done. In retrospect, the mistakes were better than the non-mistakes. The play was a mess on Broadway, and the movie is a slight mess, but it worked out really well. [It was the highest-grossing live-action musical movie until 2012’s Les Misérables.]

AP: There’s so much more we could talk about, Albert! We will have to continue in person over dinner.

AW: Thank you. You made me feel very good revisiting my work today.

AP: You’ve worked with the most incredible talent because you are an incredible talent. Your extraordinary career is a measure of who you are as a person.

AW: It’s been such a pleasure to be a part of so many stories. It always will be.

Words by ARIANNE PHILLIPS
As told to JEREMY LANGMEAD
All images © 2000 Block 2 Pictures Inc. © 2019 Jet Tone Contents Inc.
Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction / Once Upon A Time in…Hollywood

Phantom Threads

COSTUME DRAMA

May 11, 2024

Words by ARIANNE PHILLIPS
As told to JEREMY LANGMEAD

When Pulp Fiction was released 30 years ago, it wasn’t long before the wardrobe worn by Uma Thurman’s gangster wife Mia Wallace influenced a generation of designers: 1995’s catwalks from Miu Miu to Alexander McQueen boasted a multitude of over-sized white shirts fit for a twist-dancing, milkshake-sipping bad girl. The movie even prompted sell-outs of Chanel’s iconic nail colour, Rouge Noir (Vamp in the US). Here, Arianne Phillips sits down with Betsy Heimann to explore the road to creating such an iconic moment on celluloid.

‘On the eve of Pulp Fiction’s 30th anniversary, I had the good fortune to discuss the film’s iconic and culture-shifting costume design with one of our most respected and revered costume designers, Betsy Heimann. Her stellar body of work underscores generational filmmaking at its finest, with her designs featured in Reservoir Dogs, Get Shorty, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, Lady in the Water, Green Book and many other memorable films. Betsy’s costume design for Pulp Fiction remains as relevant today as when the film premiered in 1994.

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Betsy is an artist; a truly remarkable and talented costume designer whose brilliant work with Quentin Tarantino significantly contributed to the enduring success of his first two films. It also benefitted me 26 years later when I was invited to design Quentin’s Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood. I was so excited to speak to Betsy about the early days with Quentin, their process creating the visual language that we have come to know unmistakably as a “Tarantino film”, and designing and imagining the world of Pulp Fiction.’

AP: Watching Pulp Fiction again this week I thought about you so much, and what we have in common. I worked with Quentin on his last film, Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, and I really have to hand it to you that you really are a part of the visual language that Quentin is so known for – whether it’s the Hawaiian shirt on Tim Roth in Pulp Fiction (a look that re-surfaces on Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood) or Quentin’s love of a leather jacket and a T-shirt, or a black-and-white motif… this is the Tarantino language that you both created together. I’m curious to learn from you what your process was like with the young Quentin when you worked together on Reservoir Dogs. How did that happen?

BH: I met [producer] Lawrence Bender at a New Year’s Eve party and we just got chatting and he invited me to a screening of a small indie film that he had worked on, and then it evolved into him sending me scripts and asking what did I think it would cost to do the costumes for them. And I would help out with the budgets. And then, one day, he sent me this script for Reservoir Dogs. It was fascinating. I had a costume career before Reservoir Dogs – I worked my way up from seamstress – but I had never read anything like this. I said to myself, you know, they’re gonna get good actors for this because there are pages of dialogue. So when Lawrence called me up and asked, ‘So what do you think?’ I said, ‘Err, who’s doing the costumes for this movie?’ He said, ‘I don’t know yet.’ And I said, ‘I’ll do it. I wanna do it.’ He told me they didn’t have any money. And I told him I didn’t care. That’s how it happened.

AP: And what was your impression of Quentin when you first met him?

BH: Oh, his enthusiasm was so contagious. And he was very organised. I remember being very impressed that he was so prepared. He was very grateful. And I just thought, I like this kid and I like being with him, and I love his enthusiasm. And then I went over to his apartment and we started watching movies together. Quentin was always visual. We’d go through the whole script visually. And our language was the language of film. I remember one conversation most vividly about Pulp Fiction. It was about Butch, about Bruce Willis’ costume. I said I think he should wear a leather jacket. He said, yes, I want a leather jacket like Nick Nolte’s in Who’ll Stop the Rain; so I sourced a similar old brown pigskin suede one, put it in the car, and Quentin and I drove out to Malibu where we had a meeting with Bruce. Demi [Moore] was there and Bruce brought all of these 1980s and 1990s leather jackets he liked – he must have had 10, but they were all oversized – and mine looked quite skimpy in comparison. But Quentin liked it, so Bruce tried it on. He put it on and said to me, ‘Well, are you gonna drag it behind a truck?’ And I said, ‘Oh, you mean age it? Yes, and with you in it.’

AP: I love it. Another of the things that I was really noticing when rewatching it was the day players and all the ancillary characters are wonderful characters whether it’s Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Amanda Plummer, Eric Stoltz or Kathy Griffin. You did such a beautiful job of letting us know who these characters were in such a quick, short time period, the costumes really allowed us to just get there immediately. You infused so much storytelling into your costumes, it’s so impressive.

BH: Well, thank you very much. Yes, it was a big cast. As with Reservoir Dogs. We had a very big warehouse that we prepped and shot in. When I would get the things together for the fitting, I would call Quentin and he’d come in and he’d peek his head in and he would say ‘great’. But we had discussed it all before. One of the things that he and I did is watch anime cartoons. And one of them was Speed Racer. And I remembered that when we were prepping Pulp Fiction.

AP: And you put Eric Stoltz in that T-shirt, right?

BH: Yes. I said to Quentin, I think Speed Racer is the way to go. For me, I always tell a story about the character to get inspiration. And he said that he had one in his closet and so he went and got the T-shirt. There was a lot of spontaneous back and forth.

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wardrobe, brad pitt, once upon a time in…hollywood, tarantino, hollywood authentic

AP: These graphic T-shirts are a part of Quentin’s language. In my experience with him, he had a lot of graphic T-shirt ideas for Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood.

BH: He has the same respect for the graphic T-shirt that I do. It’s not just, let’s put this guy in a graphic T-shirt, it has to mean something. It’s the same on all the films I’ve worked on. On Jerry Maguire, for example, when he is writing his mission statement, I figured he went to Notre Dame College. And so I called the Student Union and asked where do you guys all hang out? And I found the Little Bar, and I got hold of a T-shirt from them, and that’s the one Maguire is wearing when he writes his mission statement – his college t-shirt, the one he wore when he was full of ideals and full of how he was going to change the world… So every T-shirt for me has meaning.

AP: That’s so great because it gives us little Easter eggs of reality. For me, watching Pulp Fiction, and seeing the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs college T-shirt that Vincent [John Travolta] wears was, like, nobody knows about that T-shirt unless they’ve been there. But Quentin wanted to get across that Jimmy had some connection with Santa Cruz. And so you see how costume can give a character an instant backstory – it really adds another layer and a texture. It’s the same with other clues you used in Reservoir Dogs. Tell us how the black suits came about in that film?

BH: Well, for Reservoir Dogs, my budget was $10,000. So I said, ‘Guys, I can give you four suits with this budget for the film. And I need to keep one clean’.

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AP: Four suits for all?

BH: Right. But, you know, we were shooting multiple action scenes with them. So the fact of the matter is that only Harvey Keitel and, briefly, Quentin, wore actual suits. We couldn’t afford them. So I found this stash of 10 black Beatle jackets at American Rag – which is now very hip, but it was a thrift store at the time – and I thought these would work on the younger guys, like Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi. They were great jackets. And then I teamed them with Beatle boots and black jeans. And Quentin was, like, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘Trust me, nobody’s gonna know the difference. It’s gonna be fabulous’.

AP: That was amazing foresight to know that it would work so well on screen and not show.

BH: Well, that’s what we do. That’s what we know as costume designers. The other thing I will tell you is that not all of the jackets people were wearing were black. Some of them were navy, some of them were dark grey. I spent a little bit of time with our cinematographer, Andrzej Sekula, and I would say, ‘Okay, look at this grey suit jacket and look at this black suit jacket. How are you lighting this picture? Are they gonna photograph the same?’ And he would say, yes, and I would trust him.

AP: I think that was ingenious. And it actually gave it a modernity that a regular suit might not have. And a black jean was probably great for all those action scenes because they could put pads under them and you wouldn’t see anything. And back to Pulp Fiction, and they’re also wearing black suits, what was your budget like then?

BH: $36,000. I remember sitting with Quentin at Barney’s Beanery, and I said to him, ‘I really think that Vincent and Jules are Reservoir Dogs.’ And he thought about it. He goes, ‘You know, I like that. I like that’. This time I could do actual suits because now these guys have a little more money. I could do a linen suit with Vincent so that he always looked kind of a mess; and with Jules [Samuel L Jackson] I wanted a very slim-fitting narrow lapel, which was not that popular back then. So I went downtown and I found this Perry Ellis suit that I could get at a discount. And the collars of the shirts were very important to me, too. With Reservoir Dogs, each one of those guys had a different shirt with a different collar and a different width of tie in proportion to the width of their chest. This is all very technical, but it gives them a difference. So in Pulp Fiction, I did that again.

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AP: And so Jules had a very narrow collared shirt because he’s the preacher?

BH: Right. And then there’s a bit of a cowboy theme in Pulp Fiction, too. Amanda Plummer has the cowboy boot dialogue, and Jules calls Tim Roth ‘Ringo’ – Gregory Peck played Jimmy Ringo in The Gunfighter. They’re all gunfighters. And so for me there was this kind of a Western influence in the costume. And we all used to shop at King’s Western Wear in the Valley and that’s where I got the idea for the bolo tie. I thought, well, here’s Vincent thinking he’s cool. He’s got his bolo tie on. And Mia [Wallace, played by Uma Thurman] says to him, ‘How are you doing, cowboy?’ And he refers back to her as a cowgirl. So these are all messages to me. So I came up with that idea and Quentin liked it.

AP: A lot of those choices influenced the way people dress then and now. Let’s talk a little bit about Mia. I really was taken by her proportions and how you used them. How did it come to be that her trousers were short, like pedal pushers? The proportions of her outfit work so beautifully, especially in the twist-dancing scene… the way that you tailored that shirt, and it had the French cuff with the cufflink, and the black-and-white motif. I really love the beautiful symmetry of design in that scene. They’re dancing and they look like cake toppers. That scene is burned in our minds forever. It really kicked off a trend.

BH: Well I thought that Mia was really a Reservoir Dog, but she couldn’t express that because she was married to the boss and she had to be chic and glamorous; the eye candy. But on her date with Vincent she wanted to show him that she was one of the guys. And so I said, I wanted her to wear the black and white. But Uma is very tall, and we didn’t have any money, and all the pants weren’t long enough for her, and so I said, ‘What the heck, let’s just cut ‘em off’. I called Chanel and I said the magic words, Uma Thurman – they are magic words, things fall from the heavens – and I told them I needed these gold ballet slippers I had seen in a magazine and they lent us them. And then the shirt had to give her some shape and I wanted it to be oversized because I wanted it to say ‘I’ve got money but I’m also one of you; I’m a bad girl’. And then we added the bandana underneath. So it was another cowboy reference.

AP: And then Mia’s bob. It all works in tandem: the short pants and the oversized shirt, and then that black bob, it’s just so successful.

BH: The bob is all Quentin. It’s based on the old film star Louise Brooks and that’s what he wanted. And so knowing that, you start with that, instead of hoping that it’ll work with what you’re doing, you start with that. That’s the reality. And the reality is the inspiration.

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AP: Something else I love, which you do beautifully, is using a costume piece more than once to tell the story; when it starts on one character, then another character wears it. So, for example, we have Vincent wearing his black suit and that wonderful trench coat. And then we have Mia coming back from dinner with him and she has the trench coat on. That’s just beautiful. It says so much. It still looks so great today.

BH: I love that you noticed the raincoat, because that was something I was really, really adamant about. And Quentin liked the idea. I knew that I wanted her dancing around in that big coat and then she could find the drugs in the pocket. I wanted to make it more of a natural thing and so I had to get that coat on him in order to later get it on her. And so I searched everywhere for one of those old gabardine raincoats from the 1950s and found it at Palace Costume.

AP: It worked so well. And I love the colour… it would be easy for it to be a black raincoat but then we would really not see the detail. Also when she puts it on, it’s clearly not her coat. And what’s amazing, again, is the way these characters dressed in Pulp Fiction still inspires the way people dress today. It’s the marriage of your trueness to the characters, but also the fact that you and Quentin really tapped into a fantasy of larger-than-life characters that a part of us would like to be. And elements of the way they looked are attainable: you both turned regular items into iconic ones by the way you used them on the characters.

BH: Yes, I suppose it is the connection that the public makes with the characters. There’s a poignancy to Mia Wallace. I mean, she has to wear the trench coat as she has to find the drugs in the pocket. So therefore she could just ruffle through his coat that’s left on the couch, or she can have it on and reach in the pocket. And these are motions and actions that the audience can relate to.

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AP: That’s because these are the choices you made in respect to how you saw these characters. The reason for its influence on fashion is that this film is such a great reflection of what was happening in our culture, and it just resonated with people. These characters are unattainable, but people can create their own versions and make it accessible because the design is so uncluttered, it’s so specific.

This film also is indelibly a part of ‘the film language’ with other costume designers and directors. I’m sure you’ve seen that your work is often referenced or recreated. In the 1990s I was doing a lot of music videos, and I know that this was cited as the pinnacle of cool for so many directors; we’ve seen iterations of it in music videos and fashion magazines. Just this last Halloween, I was in New York and I was invited to a party where everyone was supposed to come dressed as a character from Pulp Fiction. There were 500 people dressed as these characters you helped create…

BH: Who knew that 30 years later we would all still want to dress like the baddies in Pulp Fiction [laughs]. But I’m only as good as my director. I’m inspired by my director. I get all my ideas from the energy that’s coming out of my director. And Quentin was on fire. He was on fire with these two movies, and they were original, and they were different from anything I ever read.

Words by ARIANNE PHILLIPS
As told to JEREMY LANGMEAD
All images © 2000 Block 2 Pictures Inc. © 2019 Jet Tone Contents Inc.
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