Sandy Powell is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. There’s no debate. The three-time Oscar-winning costume designer oozes style and sophistication the moment she arrives in a room. And when you speak to her you immediately know not only is this woman f***ing brilliant, but she’s blunt and suffers no fools. And she masterfully lets you know it with grace and a welcoming smile. Frankly, if you’re a filmmaker who doesn’t want to work with Powell you’ve got some insecurities you need to deal with.
For the second time in her career, Powell has pulled off the improbable. She’s earned two nominations in the same year in the Costume Design category. In 2016 it was for “Carol” and “Cinderella.” This time around it’s for Yorgos Lanthimos’ Best Picture nominee “The Favourite” and Rob Marshall’s box office hit “Mary Poppins Returns.” There is a tremendous amount of sentiment this year around Ruth Carter earning her first Oscar for her work on “Black Panther,” but after reading this interview a voter might reconsider the masterwork Powell pulled off with an extremely limited budget for “The Favourite.”
Powell sat down to chat about both films at the end of last year after I’d recently caught up with “The Favourite”‘s production designer, also an Oscar nominee this year, Fiona Crombie.
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The Playlist: I’ve already spoken to Fiona. Did I say it right? Fiona?
Sandy Powell:
Fiona. Fiona Crombie.
She told me that from a design perspective Yorgos wanted was to make everything as black and white as possible. Is that correct?
I suppose. I don’t know. Well, it was certainly to restrict the color palette. I think I came on board before Fiona, because I started talking to Yorgos a couple of years before we actually did it. Or about a year. Or 18 months. Because it was going to happen and then it didn’t happen. And so, at one of those very beginning meetings we were talking about monochrome. And using a lot of white or a lot of black. And then when I heard that it was just going to be natural light only, then I was thinking about what interiors would look like and there would be lot of dark and light. And thought that restricting the color palette and actually doing something as stark as black and white, like proper white, would look interesting in that environment. And most of the film takes place in the court, actually. So the court, and the courtiers to be in black and white. And then outside of the court, which is Parliament, all of those, we’d get a bit of color there, because all the politicians are in black. All in black jackets, but then they have blue or red waistcoats, vests depending on whether they’re Tories or Whigs.
Was that historically a thing?
Not really, no. That’s exaggerated. I mean, the colors did represent. And I always forget which is which. Is it blue for the Tories or the Whigs? Always forget.
So, what else did Yorgos want specifically, besides those initial conversations?
I mean, we were doing a period film, and all of his reference material was proper, you know, paintings from the period and all the rest of it. But it was also contemporary stuff. It was all images from all over the place. And what he wanted was it not to look like people walking round in costumes. Do you know what I mean, like, so often costumey, costume dramas do. He wanted people to look real. And natural.
Lived in.
And lived in. I mean, like the women. He absolutely didn’t want makeup on the women. And he didn’t want them to look like they were wearing wigs, he didn’t want them to look like they were wearing makeup. He wanted them natural looking and their hair to look natural. Conversely, the men were to look like the sort of peacocks. You know, the parading, frivolous, sort of dandy vibe peacocks. Which, in the period, they did look like that. So, Nicholas Hoult is sort of taking on the role that normally, maybe, a woman would take on in a film that’s about men. You know, the woman is like the decorative bit in the background, quite often.
Yeah.
And now we have Nicholas Hoult as being the decorative bit. Even though he has a sort of very significant part in the film, he’s still secondary to the woman, who central to the plot. So the whole feeling was, we were doing, you know, something set in a period, but he wanted it to feel completely natural, completely normal and relevant to a modern audience, I guess. You know, like people having conversations normally, without sort of talking in a peculiar sort of way that people talk sometimes in, you know-
Period dramas.
Period films. Like, people talk in a different way, don’t they? They talk in that period drama sort of way.
So, were you able to find things during that timeframe that worked? Or did you have to sort of contemporize or go to a couple decades ahead of time to?
No, no, I didn’t. The costumes are all completely accurate to the period, cut-wise. The silhouette and the shape and how the costumes are constructed. The shape I tried to make it look as historically accurate as possible. And where we got contemporary was in the use of fabrics. And the treatment of things. So, you know, the fabrics aren’t silks and damasks and embroidered things, and you know, none of that. We couldn’t afford that anyway. And it’s none of that. It’s all mostly cotton.
Was that easier for the cast? Did it make it more comfortable for them?
I don’t know. Well, they weren’t so heavy. I mean, in reality, the clothes would have been made out of silk. They would have been light, because silk was like, really paper-thin then. But the thing is, so many costumes, especially theater costumes, are made to last. And so they’re made really heavy. And contemporary fabrics are much heavier. So, yes. Period costumes quite often are heavy, because of the fabric or the way they’ve been made. Real clothing from that period would have been light as a feather, actually. Because it just would have made with a much lighter touch.
Oh, interesting.
But, I did try to make the costumes [not] heavy. I mean, there is a lot of volume in them. And I’m not saying that they’re not as comfortable as wearing a tracksuit, no. Or a T-shirt.
One of my favorite outfits in the film is when Rachel’s character is on the shooting range. That gorgeous suit.
It’s pretty much a man’s cut.
