Costume designer Richard La Motte explains research, sourcing and building period wardrobe for historical films, from his decades in the business.
I’ve been in the film industry since being a child extra in the Ten Commandments in 1954 when I worked my summer vacation at Paramount Pictures dressing as a Hebrew boy for Egyptian crowd scenes and being fascinated at how a bunch of normal California school-aged kids could be transformed into biblical characters by the costume department.
Since then, I’ve worked as costumer, costume department supervisor, and costume designer (as well as production designer) for, approaching forty years, a wide range of films, including historical, military, ethnic adventure, westerns, musicals and modern day dramas. So I believe that my insights are experienced-based and practical.
The main criticism that I am aware of is that costume designers, from time to time, take too much “license”. Motion picture costume designers presume to alter what we know “authentically” about some historical situation, character or item of military equipage, and this alteration from strict historical fact makes the film somehow less than acceptable. It makes the film “Hollywood,” “fake,” “inauthentic,” and by extension, makes the costume designer less than perfect. But is that criticism fair?
It might be if we worked in an industry where the mandate was to re-create the historical epoch down to every correct detail with no expense spared and as much time as was needed, but that’s never the case.
The obvious answer to the costume design question is: “Get the right clothes in front of camera at the right time.” But that begs the question, “What are the right clothes?”
On a “modern” picture, the obstacles are: Everyone’s an expert. Everyone brings their modern taste and shopping experience to the set. Everyone feels free to ‘kibbutz’. Actors are sometimes more concerned with what clothes they can keep after the show than with the ’look’ of their screen character. Unit managers and line producers want you to give the director and actors what they want as long as it comes from Sears. Everyone thinks the costume designer’s job is easy, because nobody sees anything different on the set; everything looks like the street outside. But, of course, that’s the art: to make the actors look like modern characters you might see on the street and still look like they live in the imaginary world of the writer.
But on a historical (period) film, things are a lot different…
The job of the costume designer has grown with the film industry as a result of specific needs. Those needs include: representing the historical setting of the screenplay, illustrating the drama as written, creating convincing costumes for leading actors, introducing and maintaining a visual, artistic, audience-satisfying aesthetic. And, oh yes, doing it for a budget.
All this started in the 1920’s when the major studios were born. They rose and made empires of themselves by making fantasy fare for large audiences hooked on glamour and escapist films. Stars were the workhorses that drew the studio wagons, and their images were polished by publicity departments. They had to look good.
This goes to the old observation that a film is the only factory-produced product that a customer buys then leaves with only the memory.
As major studios vied with each other for box-office dollars, they made more and more lavish productions: musicals, historical, adventure and “modern” dramas; but always the pre-eminent concern was the stars. The drama had to suit them, the part had to suit them, the director had to suit them and, of course, the costumes had to suit them.
This is where the costume designer comes in.
I think that in order to understand the job, we have to explore the five major areas that shape the job and influence the outcome. They are: The drama and its characters, the historical setting, the budget, the collaboration, and the designer as an artist. If we look at each of these areas, in turn we can get a better understanding of the actual job and then, and only then, judge the proficiency of the designer and the film under discussion.
(1.) The Drama and its Characters.
With a movie it all starts here; it’s a story after all. The rules of drama haven’t changed in about twenty-five hundred years: man against man, man against self, man against nature; protagonist versus antagonist, hero – heroine – villain. These situations can be arranged into twenty master plots according to one book; a few more or less according to others, but all drama is defined by/as conflict, usually with moral connotations; that makes every story a parable and every character a symbol for some condition or principle.
The real story then, resides not in the dialogue nor setting but the theme; the underling point of the film is what all the visual/audible information expresses and reveals. One could say that the invisible spirit of the film is clothed in the art-directed appearance which is communicated to the audience via camera-sound-projection.
The effectiveness of the communication then, relies on the strength and accuracy of the physical illustration, not of the superficial-quasi-historical appearance but of the character-symbols which articulate the theme.
Simply stated, this is why the “good guys” wear white hats and the “bad guys” wear black. It’s no use saying, “But that’s not how they looked”. In a strict documentary, one can be blissfully unconcerned with anything except research – but in a dramatic film, the point is to illustrate the drama so that the “look” supports the premise. If you turned off the sound, you could still recognize the genre, the parts and their condition – you may not understand completely, but you would have a “pretty good idea” of what the story was about.
I like to think of the balance as being between a Documentary and Kabuki approach to theater. Documentary speaks for itself, find out what was worn and reproduce it, but in Kabuki the premise is that as long as you’re presenting something never before seen, why be literal? Why not take it totally into the range of the imagination. The danger with that is that you may create something that isn’t recognizable by the general audience, so most of us work somewhere in the middle.
One way senior costumers would explain it to us was: “Suppose each scene was a book in itself and you were charged with drawing the cover illustration, something that would illustrate perfectly the meaning of the scene and its characters. In order to convey that information visually, how would you dress them?” John Milius used to tell me, “If you have a choice, always shoot the myth.” John Huston used to tell his costume people, “I don’t care what you use as long as it looks believable.”
By the way, this is best exemplified by films’ and theaters’ constant recasting of Shakespeare’s plays into other periods, including westerns, fantasies and space sagas.
If you allow that a film is usually first an emotional document and only second, a historical document, then arguments about the relative historical non-accuracy of any piece becomes a little muted, less so if the costume in question serves the spiritual or thematic sense of the character better than the accurate one would have. In our business the characters, even historical ones, have to appear correct, even if they are in reality, inaccurate.
I remember on the Wind and the Lion, the character of “Raisuli” was a romantic pirate of the desert played by Sean Connery. There had been a real Raisuli in 1904, and the film was patterned a bit after him, but in the only known photos taken of him he looked like a very ordinary middle-aged Arab man in white loose-fitting clothes – not at all the dynamic and dashing screen character written by Milius. I realized immediately that the “real” look was a non-starter and designed costumes for Milius’ Raisuli as played by Sean.
This search for the character’s significance is the first step for any costume designer, to identify the characters in the script by type and function. Once this is done the second step is to look at the story setting.
(2.) The Historical Setting.
This is the part of the costume design challenge that I always have the most fun with because it always entails the exciting prospect of learning interesting things that I would never have otherwise discovered.
The indispensable key to understanding any period and/or people is research. I know that just in the time that I’ve been working on films there has been an explosion in the amount of research available and a growing ease of finding it. We had to scour libraries and book stores for costume research, maybe make notes while watching old films on television and, of course, find relevant art books by painters contemporary to the period in question. Now, click a few computer keys and find web sites containing photo information as well as huge book sources accessible by title and/or subject. Want something more visual? Hundreds of period and foreign films, documentaries, military training and propaganda films from around the world, all on tape or disk. Museum quality photo investigations of just about every period and ethnic group are available also. Today, there’s just no reason not to be able to research just about anything, anywhere, anytime. In order to try and represent any period or people, you have to really immerse yourself in information, enough so that you develop your “eye” to recognize shapes, colors and textiles that represent the period in question, so that searching out garments or fabrics for manufacture becomes second-nature. But even a casual glance at research while considering your prospects for re-creating a period reveals a central truth: everyone and everything are products of their own time; and although the clothes were what they were, they may not, for various reasons, be suitable for film costumes.
The reality of the past is the reality of the past, however, every attempt at a new re-creation is inexorably tied to the aesthetics of the period of translation even more than the period being translated. Why? Because we live in the “now”, and films are supposed to connect with a “now” audience. “Now” sensibilities are always going to intrude themselves. (This goes also for editing and shooting styles.)
By sensibilities I mean, not only popular taste, but the existence of certain textiles, trimmings, animal products, dyes, even craftspeople that would be necessary to accurately reproduce a distant period.
By way of example let’s look at the three films about Cleopatra. The first one was made in 1917 with Theda Bara.
It was obviously well researched and everything, sets and costumes, made-to-order. In the late twenties the opening of King Tut’s tomb set off a world-wide enthusiasm for all things Egyptian (so strong an interest in fact that it started the Art Deco movement) – that and the invention of sound, urged a re-make starring Claudette Colbert in 1934, touted at the time as being highly authentic. In 1963 Fox tried it again with Elizabeth Taylor. Now, all three films had the same characters, the same general settings, and access to the same general research. Why don’t they look the same? Ancient Egypt didn’t change, ancient Rome didn’t change. They look different because each film translated ancient Egypt for its own time and audience, with its own sensibilities and with the technology and materials available to it; and so it is with us. The films we work on now with all earnestness, may appear to future audiences to be dated, not to the ancient past, but to us, because of our “now” sensibilities, which we unconsciously build into them.
Another comparison might be pirate films. A more current film is Pirates of the Caribbean, and not too long ago there was Cutthroat Island. Both films are about the same period, roughly 1650 to 1670, and both films show British soldiers. Any student of military history can tell you that national standing armies, equipped alike with regimental uniforms, didn’t appear much before 1690 in Europe (with very small exceptions). The chances of uniformed British soldiers in Jamaica in 1650 is slim to none, that was the age of commissioned “captains” and troops of freebooting mercenaries, but dressed like that they’d be hard to tell from the pirates. So what’s a costume designer to do? In Cutthroat Island, the uniforms look more 1650’s in shape but don’t necessarily “look” English. In Pirates of the Caribbean, the soldiers “look” British but the uniforms are of a style closer to 1776, than 1650. My answer: so what. The “wrong” uniforms in Pirates of the Caribbean stand up as a very viable illustration of the British Army that everyone who sees the film will accept without a second thought. While they may be technically wrong they play on our “now” sensibilities to advance the movie smoothly. Mission accomplished.
Another current film that got a lot of attention was Gladiator with Russell Crowe. It was one of my favorites, and I think, without much exception a very handsomely mounted period film. The leading lady, sister of the Roman Emperor had a lot of screen time and her clothes were beautiful indeed, but they reminded me strongly of the paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the Victorian-romantic artist, famous for his dreamy erotic paintings of ancient Rome. Not a bad thing.
(3.) Budget.
Unfortunately, admit it or not, this is the mother of all opportunities and all problems in doing any historical film and the direct influence of budget on the “look” of the film cannot be overstated.
It doesn’t matter – not the quality of your research, not your personal dedication to doing the most accurate portrayal ever attempted – what matters is what you can afford.
This is the difference between the look of a movie-of-the-week and a major studio film. Budget and money translates into preparation time, additional labor, purchases, rentals and manufacture. Without time and manufacture dollars, you have to rely on what’s available for rent and instead of being able to create your film according to the look and feel you want, you have to shoe-horn your requirements into what other people have already made for other films (perhaps long ago). This is mostly successful on Westerns or other small films of a Victorian nature, and some military films owing to the number of these films that have been made and the amounts of such stock still available for rent. Even so, sometimes you can be out of luck, and that’s when you have to be extra resourceful.
I was hired once by TNT to costume design a M.O.W. about Geronimo. Under normal conditions this might not have been so bad as clothing for Apaches and civilians is usually easily rentable at the large Hollywood costume houses. At that time, however, Dan Moore was costume designing the feature Geronimo for Walter Hill. The upshot: there was nothing in town to rent and of course because it was a M.O.W. the prep time was only about five weeks. I had to embark on a crash manufacture program in Mexico, creating about four hundred Indian costumes including moccasins and jewelry and about 120 Mexican soldiers’ uniforms and get them to our location in Tucson in time for shooting. I barely made it – and oh, yes, I also had to accomplish this with a budget based on renting everything in town.
Rambo III had an interesting twist for me. The film was about “Rambo” going to Afghanistan and fighting the Russians with the Mujahideen. At that time the war in Afghanistan was on the news nightly and pictures of Afghan fighters were in every magazine. Afghan garments were unique, regional, ethnic and nowhere to be found in sufficient quantities in the states (with multiples, crowds and two shooting units, I would need over a thousand outfits not counting hundreds of Russian uniforms). My first thought was that we had to make them because a lack of authenticity would be immediately apparent to everyone. As we were collecting samples for manufacture, I met an Afghan importer who told me that if I went to Pakistan, to the Afghan refugee camps, I could buy everything that I would want at a lesser cost than making them here. We talked to the producers and they agreed. I spent a couple of weeks with the Mujahideen along the Afghan border buying and collecting clothing, (and some great memories) getting the most out of the money available while providing the most authentic costumes possible.
Working at various budget levels sharpens your aim. You come to realize that to get the most on the screen in terms of quantity and quality, you have to prioritize your requirements and allocate your resources according to an organized plan of action that will make the best use of your budget dollar. This skill is no less important than researching a period or being a committed artist in terms of doing the most effective job you can as costume designer, so that business sense is also part of the job of costume designer on any historic film.
Everything so far has been about the physical job requirements, but it is a people business.
(4.) Collaboration.
This is by far the most difficult part of the job. I remember Sylvester Stallone once said to me, “If this movie comes out and it’s bad, they’re not going to say that the director made a bad movie or that you made a bad movie. They’re going to say that Sylvester Stallone made a bad movie, so if I’m going to get the rap for it, I’m going to have things my way!” What could I say, he was right.
The question, “What is the role of costume designer on any film?” is, at the interaction level, contentious to say the least.
We are all hired technicians that bring our skills to a film and in return we get a paycheck and a screen credit. As costume designer I would like to feel that I’m the one that knows about the costumes and how to use them. I feel that as long as I’m getting the screen credit for the job, I should be the one doing it, and I feel that if I’m the one running the costume department and the one responsible for its effectiveness, then productions’ requirements should go through me so that I can find solutions using the resources of my department.
But what if other members of the production team don’t see things that way and aren’t the least bit concerned with my feelings about it? (Which, by the way, is usually the case.)
We work for the producers. We help the director with their film. We are expected to take the advice of the production designer and the technical advisor. We are the ones who help make the actors comfortable and beautiful while working within the financial parameters of the accounting department. We must orchestrate our colors with the cinematographer, our materials with the sound department, adapt costumes to the needs of stunt personnel and reorganize ourselves at the instant insistence of an assistant director… This means that we can only intermittently do our job as we see it. The rest of our time consumed by navigating the reefs and shoals of changing production requirements, bruised egos and cross-purpose other departments’ responsibilities. There’s no crying about it, it’s the reality of filmmaking.
I remember on A Man Called Horse II, I had made what I thought was a beautiful coat for Richard Harris. Copied after frontier coats of the 1830’s, it had a cape with twisted fringe all around. His first day on the set, Richard cut all the fringe off the coat and demanded to wear his ankle-tight 1970’s, inside zippered mod-boots. We had fun anyway.
I once costume designed a short-lived series called Indians. The producers wanted the show to look “real” and the Native Americans to wear “everyday” looking natural leather outfits with little adornment. On location, three days into the first show, a producer came to the set from New York. He said that the network people had seen dailies and felt that the Indians needed more color because they weren’t as bright as the commercials that interrupted the show every twelve minutes. I had two days to re-trim about fifty outfits. I bought loads of gross-grain ribbon, cut it all into pieces and with iron and fuse-tape created simulated quill work-looking patterns on muslin stripes which were sewn onto shirts, leggings and dresses. The second episode was much more colorful.
Every film is a bit different according to the mix of personalities. Some shows are more restraining than others. Sometimes the directors or producers have very definite views, and sometimes they are willing to let the designer bring their ideas foreword. In those situations, it’s good if the costume designer actually has some good ideas.
(5.) The Costume Designer as an Individual Artist.
A lot of what anyone sees on screen is the product of the costume designer’s imagination, even with all the extraneous challenges. We are, after all, the ones that get the costumes. Our ideas come through overall, if not in every specific costume.
The pulling of rental stock sounds easy but it takes experienced attention to detail of type, size, texture and color. Remember, there’s no rehearsal for wardrobe crowds. Clothing collected from many sources is combined on the day. It works into complete costumes on background crowds; crowds that form believable backgrounds and atmosphere for the story to take place against.
Manufacture – well this is where a costume designer is supposed to shine. Familiarity with color theory, textiles, their properties, drapery and usage, dying, various types of manufacture and designing garments for both looks and construction is the very essence of the job. Frequently, designers are also great sketch artists able to create renderings, that once swatched can be budgeted and translated into cloth by the experienced hands of the workroom.
With any good designer the artistic dimension goes deep. They see the finished film in their minds’ eyes and work with their knowledge and resources to bring it into material existence one garment at a time.
All the manufacture has to be done with an eye to how it will eventually fit into the overall presentation of the film, and this may necessitate both large scale manufacture and subsequent large scale distressing. Can you imagine what a film like Enemy at the Gates would have looked like with everyone in clean uniforms? Can you imagine how long a wardrobe crew had to labor over hundreds of uniform pieces, newly constructed, dying, shredding, painting and breaking down?
On Gods and Generals, we dressed, on average, five to six hundred people a day for about five months. I had made close to two thousand uniforms including around five hundred overcoats. All of it had to be broken-down, dirtied, frayed and generally made to look acceptable as battle damaged and well-worn uniforms. This was in addition to cast civilian clothing, including both men and women and uniforms purchased from other sources. It was a full-time job for about twenty-five costumers and tailors.
In the end, I believe that the more determined, artistic, film-wise and diplomatic a costume designer is, the better their chances are of making themselves and their contribution accepted.
There’s no doubt that nothing gains confidence like experience and ability, but that experience and ability have to be presented in a way that is helpful and non-threatening. And herein lays the real art of the successful costume designer – not only to have the right ideas that speak to universal understanding in the translation of history, drama and character, but the ability to present these ideas in a manner that sparks everyone’s confidence and makes them desired by the other members of the production staff including the cast.
So the answer to the question, “What is the role of a costume designer on a historical film?” might be: Historian, Artist, Craftsperson, Department C.E.O. and perhaps most important, Diplomat.
Richard La Motte, a 35-year veteran of the business, has worked on numerous movies, serving as Military Costume Technical Advisor (Last of the Mohicans, Pearl Harbor), Costume Designer (Gods and Generals, Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Rambo III, Goonies, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Wind and the Lion, Hounds of Hell), Production Designer, Costume Supervisor, and Property Master. He is the author of the book, “Costume Design 101,” published by MWP.
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