Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a feast for the eyes. Never in the film’s 180-minute run time does one feel starved for visuals, as Del Toro fills the screen with both the beauties and gore associated with Mary Shelley’s perennial classic. From the moment The Creature appears in the icy blue arctic landscape, a candle-lit epic unfolds, thanks to all the hands that touched it. “You’re only as good as your colleagues,” says the humble Kate Hawley, Frankenstein’s costume designer, just as much an integral part of the team who brought Del Toro’s film to life.
Hawley—who worked with Del Toro on the never-produced The Hobbit, as well as Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak—has been part of Frankenstein for years, though not as long as Del Toro, who has been developing the idea since he was a boy. Her dedication to the project is clear in the results: the saturated colors that pop against gray Victorian England, the shabbiness of Victor Frankenstein’s blouse after days of sleepless work in the lab, and the evolution of Jacob Elordi’s Creature, which plays out through his wardrobe. “The Creature’s first experience of love really is warmth, food, and clothing,” Hawley tells W of Elordi’s stitched-up monster.
And while Hawley succeeds with Del Toro’s depiction of the familiar Creature, it’s really with Mia Goth’s wardrobe for Elizabeth, where she thrives. Dressed in rich jewel tones, the film’s moral center steals every scene she’s in, thanks to both Goth’s portrayal and Hawley’s creations. The icing on the top of this emerald green cake comes in the form of gems—lots of them—provided by Tiffany & Co. for use in the film. “I had access to the archives, which was a girl’s princess dream,” Hawley says of her work with the jeweler. Below, she talks about the “magical relationship” with Tiffany’s, the beauty of a blood-filled wedding dress, and the difficulties of creating a wolf-worthy coat.
You and Guillermo have worked on four films together, so I have to assume there’s a pretty strong connection there.
We are similar in our love of operatic moments. Peter Jackson introduced us, and when we first met, Guillermo was looking at my bookshelf. He saw Francisco Goya, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Caravaggio, and he said, “Well, we can work together.” It’s about having a language you can share. I’m always trying to get inside the director’s head and interpret what they’re seeing, but with Guillermo, it’s a little bit easier because he’s got such a rich, vast knowledge of art, history, and literature. He’s such an educated man in that way. So it’s very rewarding. It’s like catnip.
Where do you begin with an expansive project like this?
I actually don’t start with the clothing, because I’m a bit of a geek. I do so much research. I read Mary Shelley’s book again. Guillermo decided the film was going to be more of a romantic tragedy than a horror, so we looked at a lot of Caravaggio paintings, because he had that tonal quality. We talked a lot about color and light.
And, of course, I embed myself in the historical period, because there’s so much happening between the 1840s and 1870s. The silhouette changes all the time, particularly for women, and that’s always your clearest statement of what period you’re in. But then, you also have to let all of that go, because the main inspiration comes from the script, and my main job is to serve Guillermo’s vision.
The use of color did feel very intentional. In the first chapter about Victor’s youth, you have the mother in this shocking red against black and white.
The color palette was just black, white, and red. It is almost a reference to Guillermo’s other films, like The Devil’s Backbone, when there’s that visceral stream of blood coming out of the boy’s wounds. Also, [cinematographer Dan Laustsen] and Guillermo wanted to use candlelight as basically the single light source. And candlelight’s a wonderful thing, but it worked against the color we were trying to achieve. My team had to work hard to create color that would read well against it. We spent quite a lot of time researching and developing how to maintain the saturation and intensity.
Many characters are introduced through their wardrobe. Claire Frankenstein has this swoosh of red, and we see Henrich Harlander’s pants, shoes, gloves, and cane before anything else. How does that feel for you to really introduce these characters to the audience?
I always think it’s wonderful. I love that someone can be introduced by their shoes or a gloved hand. It’s about revealing layers. It’s not always Darth Vader entering in the cape. We all wear shoes, but what they are and how they’re made says a lot.
OK, I want to walk through some of the individual characters. Let’s start with Christoph Waltz’s Harlander. How did his wardrobe come about?
Guillermo and I had some very different images at the beginning. We were thinking something much more heightened, but that evolved and changed when Christoph came. You can draw and design clothes as much as you like, but it can all change once you see the actor work. It became much more restrained than what I’d planned. Christoph brought his own wonderful tone and weight, so you have to support that as a designer. But we stuck to the same color palette. Guillermo was very specific about blues, like beetle blues, which became part of Elizabeth’s world as well.
Then there were the tight tan gloves, which almost look like little mannequin hands. We also built corsets to create this feeling of the character holding himself up and keeping everything together in a very controlled way. Then there are these wonderful bits he has collected. He reflects Guillermo in that way. He has the cane with the little nymph and other little quirks.
What about Oscar Isaac as Victor? In contrast to the well-curated Harlander, he seems like the kind of guy who just throws something on in order to cover his body.
Absolutely. At the point when Victor meets Harlander, he is down on his luck. He’s got some fabulous stuff in his apartment left over from the ancestral home, but he hasn’t got money. He has a shabby, care-worn feel, something in the world of bohemian artists. That was something Guillermo discussed about Victor’s character from the very beginning: this is an artist making The Creature. It’s your Pablo Picasso, it’s your Damien Hirst, it’s your Francis Bacon. It’s not the mad scientist.
The big moment for me was the creation scene, which Guillermo described as a long labor. He wanted it to feel like an orchestral piece, which goes on for days and days. So I thought, “Well, this isn’t someone who is changing their clothes. They eat, sleep, and drink this thing.” When I was looking at that reference of Sigmar Polke, Bacon, and Hirst in their studios, when they’re working, they don’t change. They could be wearing some beautiful designer jacket, but it’s now got paint all over it. They don’t care. As you see in another scene, Victor leaps out of the bath naked to pursue a thought. Guillermo captured the joy of creation and the excitement of having an idea, so we wanted the clothes to support that.
At first, The Creature doesn’t wear much, but he does gather a ragged wardrobe as we go on. How did you build that?
We start with the simplicity of the bandages he was born in. The next layer is the coat from the Crimean battlefield, which holds the memory of the man who wore it. He’s wearing the skin of another man in a way. There’s the reality of the wardrobe, too. He’s gaining clothes, but he’s also being blown up by dynamite and falling into ice. So I had a whole team working on The Creature’s clothing. His clothes have to transform in a way that suggests the things that happen to him. We had so many different coats for the explosions, and there was one period where our lives were dominated by making coats for the wolves to attack. They’re very sensitive animals, so we had to build multiple coats with meat packs, which the wolves would respond to. We would get coats sent back from the wolf wrangler, and he would say, “No, they didn’t like this one.”
We need to talk about Mia Goth’s Elizabeth, because she wears these beautiful pieces. I noticed a lot of cool jewel tones in her wardrobe.
Guillermo said he wanted really intense, bright colors, so I said, “Oh, great.” Then I thought, “Hang on, we’re doing gothic.” I took a moment to get my head around it, because you still want to serve the tone Guillermo wanted.
Tell me about working with Tiffany & Co. on the jewelry.
It was quite a magical relationship from the beginning. I had drawings of Elizabeth that I showed Christopher [Young, Vice President & Creative Director of Tiffany Patrimony and Global Creative Visual Merchandising], and there was this immediate synchronicity. We were on the same page. It absolutely supported the work I’d already done. We were knee deep in absinthe greens and purples. Then, I saw the scarab necklace. Guillermo had written, “Elizabeth’s studies at the cafe, reading William Paley’s Natural Theology.” You couldn’t find a better match.
Were all the Tiffany pieces archival?
We did make some pieces together that feel a part of that world. But the majority are originals.
And the wedding dress, my god.
Other than The Creature, that was one of the first things I drew. It’s Frankenstein’s Bride imagery. I did draw one Victorian bride look, and Guillermo just went, “No.” So, I went back. Elizabeth reflects Victor’s world at the beginning, but in the end, she’s reflecting The Creature, and the bridal dress is integral to that. I played around with historical references, like Swiss ribbon bodices, and then we externalized it. That dress is three layers. There are the ribbons, there’s another little jacket that’s based on Swiss German folk traditional dress, and then the Swiss bodice goes on top. It’s almost like an X-ray. Then, at the very end, when the bleeding comes through, that takes you right back to the mother in the beginning.
It’s weird to say, but when the dress filled with blood, it was so beautiful.
I love it. Don’t you love organza and tulle filled with blood? Memento mori. Death is to be remembered as a beautiful thing.
Source: W Magazine
Be First to Comment