In films that have a very time-specific wardrobe, do you gather authentic pieces from that time period, or modern pieces that look like they’re from that time?
For films like Almost Famous, which was semi-autobiographical about Cameron Crowe, he brought in all the pictures of all the rock bands he was on the road with. Then he and I had a friend in common who was a photographer on the road with Crosby Stills and Nash so I brought in those photos. So we had a bit of a microcosm of the ‘70s.
Then Michael Denison who unfortunately is no longer with us, he was my assistant and supervisor, we all went to Seattle to the ports where vintage clothes would come in. We put our masks on and got to work digging through those barrels for the real stuff. This is where we got a lot of the blue jeans. And then we stopped in San Francisco to pick up a few key pieces. There’s a woman with a shop called “The Way We Wore” who also had a warehouse, and so there was a few key pieces there we ended up using for samples. There were no modern pieces in that movie at all whatsoever. We did a lot of thrifting. At that time, around 2000, you could still go to places like Vermin outside of LA to these rag-picker places where you could dig through these vats of clothes, and pick up some really great samples and pieces.
I was talking with another costume designer recently, and she said she wasn’t interested in fashion. Do you think having interests in costume design and fashion are separate?
They’re absolutely different, they’re extraordinarily different. It’s like a chicken and an egg situation, because some films are inspired by fashion, but then some fashion is inspired by film. I would say that I like fashion, but it doesn’t always lend itself to what I’m doing. Fashion is transitory, it’s of the moment, about a feeling. And costume design is about a character.
Altuzarra has some beautiful pantsuits this season. I love a good pantsuit and they are hard to find. Their runway show was fun too. With that in mind McQueen cuts a pantsuit with a flared trouser that makes anyone look like they are in good shape.
I am also a jean girl, and I am all over Current Elliott. They are my go to. There are always a pair or two of Fiorentini and Baker boots in my closet. They’re so comfy.
A good T-shirt is hard to find. So I am embarking on a
T-shirt line of my own. The time has come (again) for us to have good quality, good color and good fit in a tee that won’t get holes in the body after one wash.
Lastly, I am also a big fan of Theory. They are a timeless classic. I have been accused of being that too.
What are some of your favorite brands to work with on set and why?
I hate to be boring, but the clothes I work with are character driven. I search clothes which suit whatever the character is for the film, so there really is no favorite brand. I mean, often times I go to Prada for personal and for work. I go to Dolce [and Gabbana] a lot. Dolce, they cut a beautiful men’s suit, beautiful women’s clothes. They’ve gotten a bit off of their traditional stuff, but Dolce is a go-to for work, a lot. Michael Kors for work, Hugo Boss, John Varvatos, and we work with a lot of Suit Supply for
Liam Neeson.
What brands are among your personal favorites then?
Prada. Their prints are beautiful and I always find their color combinations very sympathetic.Their shoes are very comfortable. I wear their slip-ons to work most days, plus they’ve lasted me years.
Obviously you have to be adaptable enough to dress someone for whatever a story calls for, which may mean you’re working with clothes or subcultures you’re not familiar with. I imagine dressing “the Gimp” in Pulp Fiction was one of these instances. How do you go about tackling something like that?
I give them to my assistant.
Really?
When you have an assistant costume designer, they’re not just someone who follows you around with a pen and paper. They’re a designer. Sometimes it’s good to get other people’s vision in with your vision on the screen. It’s a group thing. Plus, I don’t want to go over to the Pleasure Chest. You go. But that’s the only thing I’ve really passed off. Aside from things like hotel uniforms, or doormen uniforms… or sets where we have over 375 fittings.
Do actors ever want to keep their costumes?
Noooo! Leads usually get to always, but the rest, never. What’s strange though, is I’ve been working on the designs for Godless, this Western that’ll be on Netflix later, and besides the fact that all these men’s dreams have been to be in a Western, every man on the show wants to take their clothes home. They love the cut of those 1884 coats. They all want them, it’s insane!
So leads keep their clothes, did Uma Thurman or anyone from Pulp Fiction keep theirs?
Well, no. We had to sell all the Pulp Fiction clothes, so we would have money to finish the movie. Nothing remains.
Do you think fashion influences costume design? In the sense that, if you had to redo the styling for Almost Famous, do you think it would look different today compared to then?
I have to say it’s the reverse, I’ve never been so knocked off in my life. I’ve had the great good fortune to have set a lot of fashion trends. From Almost Famous, those coats with the fur collars, even Oscar De La Renta made the boots I had created — those embroidered, lace-up knee high boots I made for Kate Hudson, those got knocked off. I mean, it sets huge fashion trends, I just have to say that in the case of Almost Famous I think I’m still influencing fashion, and I wouldn’t do it any different if I had to do it again today.
When I did Get Shorty too, men did not ever wear a three-button knit polo under a suit until the main character did, and that became the casual thing to wear instead of a shirt and tie. I think that if you’re designing for a particularly charismatic character and people see the movie, they’ll say “hey, I really dig how they look” and want to emulate that. That’s when you get knocked off.
And also look at those slim black suits in Reservoir Dogs. There were no slim black suits then. And I think Miuccia Prada even said a long time ago, that Reservoir Dogs inspired her to create a menswear line.
If you had to do another period piece today, would you consider using modern garments, like the ones from Gucci’s latest collection which have a strong ‘70s look to them?
Yeah that’s not cool, I wouldn’t do it. It’s not authentic. But that collection is gorgeous, I mean, I’d love to do a modern movie with those pieces if he’d give them up, but budget usually could never afford it.
Where do you start researching and sourcing inspiration when you get films that are period pieces?
First I’ll go to the script, because usually if it’s a period film, there’s something that’s referred to that’s based in reality even though it’s a fictional story. Usually an event, so I’ll go to the time period that the event took place. I have a basement downstairs full of books, but now we have the internet. I’ll search the era, and the part of the country — like 1884 Arizona — and see what comes up. I’ll go to the research library, I spend a lot of time researching. If I’m lucky and there’s a big enough budget, I’ll have a researcher who can continue that work as we go on. I buy more books each time, I learn more each time. And if that period comes around in another project, I have this broader base for it. Then you can get into the more specific details of the stories.
What about in cases where a director insists on something personal, like when Tarantino wanted Julie Sweeney to wear his favorite flannel from high school for her junkyard scene in Pulp Fiction? Is it more, whatever the director says goes? Or do you guys talk things like that through?
That was the only request he made… I don’t remember he insisted though. I think it was more like, “I have a really cool flannel shirt at home that would be really perfect for her to wear” and I said “sure.” So I don’t take anything like that the wrong way, especially if we’re not working with
a lot of money. As long as it looks good. Though I was so fortunate to work with Quentin when he was young. He might insist on a lot of things now, but he never insisted on anything with me. We were really great together, we were very collaborative. Those times were really happy times for me creatively.
Back in the day, we used to go to the Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard, and over a meal, we went over Reservoir Dogs. We discussed it, we discussed visual references, we’d go to his house and he’d show me a lot of French new wave films and a lot of things that were his influences. And I remember saying “I think everything you’re showing me is guys in suits. And I think if you’ve just gotten out of jail and you want to be anonymous, you would all go to a thrift store to get a black suit, a white shirt and a tie because that’s what you could afford. Shouldn’t cost more than $6-$10.” This is how that idea was born, he tells me his vision, that vision strikes my vision, I come up with an idea, and the whole thing is very collaborative. He might pop in for the fittings, and we’d be done.
Is there a lot of back-and-forth between you and whoever is the director?
Very much so. My time is in the beginning, with the prep. A costume designer gets a certain number of weeks to work with the director, do their research, sketches, etc. In that time, it’s my job to get his vision on the screen. It’s my job to leave my ego at the door and bring their idea to
the screen.
Have you ever totally disagreed with the director in those sort of instances? How do you work through it?
Well, I’ve gotten fired. It’s not a bad thing. Sometimes you don’t see eye-to-eye with people, and you just say bye, and get another job 20 minutes later. There have been cases during the “get to know you” process where I’ve met the director, and had to say “it’s okay, this fitting has been a total waste of both of our time.”
When we hear a lot of stylists in fashion talk about their work — whether for shoots or events — it seems as though there has to be a certain level of personal chemistry and collaboration with whoever they’re working with. Like they have to share a vision, yet still be very open to each other’s criticism.
Is it fairly similar working in film?
Filmmaking is a collaborative art, and I always say “don’t worry I have more than one idea.” I’m very flexible. I think that that’s one of the things stylists and costume designers share, that you have to be open and you have to be flexible. I try to get the director’s vision on the screen, with the trust of the actor. How I see it, there’s the character written on the page, then there’s the actor, and the costume is somewhere in the middle. It’s a collaboration, and I very much like that.
I would hold neither above the other at all, but I have to say they’re very different. A stylist, for print or for event, is about styling for a moment. That moment has to sell something, or showcase an actor as a person. And it can be very, very difficult. So a stylist creates a moment, but we create a journey. Sometimes an actor has 12 changes, sometimes three changes, or sometimes 45 and we have to lead them on that journey.
Actually, how many multiples did you guys have for Reservoir Dogs?
I could only afford four each, I only had $10,000 from the costume budget of that movie.
Did you end up making those costumes then or shopping for them?
There was no money to make them. We got suits through donations, I did a lot of thrifting, I did some serious work with the cinematographer. I’d show him a grey jacket that had the same lines as a black one, and ask if it would photograph the same. If he said yes, that was it, so some of the suits weren’t even black.
It’s amazing you were able to get them to look so consistent for each character in that case.
When I met Quentin, he was a young man and he had so much enthusiasm that it was contagious. I remember saying to him, “Trust me, just trust me. This is going to photograph like this, and no one will be able to tell the difference,” and he went with it.
Do you design all your clothing, or do you shop for it?
It depends. For movies like Almost Famous, I designed everything but the blue jeans. Nobody knows that, people think I got everything at vintage stores. I think that’s a testament though, to what good agers and textile artists I was working with who were able to take these brand new things and make them look old, and make them look worn. We did all that ourselves.
But then on a movie like Jerry Maguire, that one was pretty much entirely shopped. I made a little black dress for Renee Zellweger though, because the director specifically said it had to be an Audrey Hepburn-type dress. It had to tie at the shoulders, so they could incorporate the action for the love scene, where it would be untied at the shoulders.
If it’s a modern picture, and I can’t find what I want, I don’t have any problem making it. Why would I spend my entire day looking for a green silk shirt, when I could just make it. So, I am comfortable shopping, and sometimes I bring some stock with me from rental houses, and other times I’ll just design it myself. Especially for movies with a lot of action, you need multiples. Think about Reservoir Dogs. If you shoot that film out of sequence, they’re bloody then they’re clean, they’re bloody then they’re clean. You need more than one.
How did you get your start doing costume design?
The career was suggested to me by Theoni Aldredge who was a very great costume designer of her day. I was making one of a kind jackets out of vintage fabric, remnants of quilts, and old drapes and stuff that I would salvage all the good parts from to make something new. And one of her shoppers bought a jacket — she was doing a film in Chicago and I was selling at this boutique — she said “who made this?” After that she invited me to the set, and asked if I had ever thought about being a costume designer. It resonated with me, I had studied theater arts and graphic design. I was in Chicago then, but I came back to California, where I worked my way up in film.
“we all went to Seattle to the ports where vintage clothes would come in. We put our masks on and got to work digging through those barrels”
“filmmaking is a collaborative art, and I always say ‘don’t worry I have more than one idea.’”
“I would say that I like fashion,
but it doesn’t always lend itself to what I’m doing.”
By default, we tend to credit directors as the sole geniuses behind our favorite films — George Lucas for the Star Wars saga, Wes Anderson for his quirky worlds of pastel, Quentin Tarantino for his meticulously stylized universes full of plot twists. However, behind every director is a carefully selected team of artists, designers and craftsmen who work to bring their vision to the screen. These are the people who often go unrecognized for making iconic films look the way they do.
Among some of the most overlooked are costume designers, whose role and expertise are crutial to how well a film may potentially perform. A good costume designer’s work is either
so seamless and realistic you don’t notice it, allowing you to lose yourself in the film's story; or it’s eccentric and impossible to ignore, elevating already charismatic characters to larger-than-life levels. In the latter case, it’s not uncommon for these characters and their clothes to influence the world of fashion both on the runway and the street. To explore the dynamic of fashion and fashion in film, we spoke to Betsy Heimann, the costume designer of such quintessential films as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire.
