Let’s talk about then the themes that you were going for. Obviously there’s a lot of blues and grays and slate greens in the movie. How did you try to mix it up? What were you going for with the color schemes for each character?
Even though it is in color the movie has a black and white kind of element and Guillermo and I talked about how within the film’s world, it is very content in its black and white. In fact, there’s talk about the future in color and it’s viewed as an ugly thing. So, the ugly oranges and avocados that we associate with later on in the sixties was looked upon as the ugly future. Within that the color palette, which was worked out with [Production Designer] Paul Austerberry, myself, and Guillermo, we had three or four different color palettes that we worked with. The Eliza character [Sally Hawkins] wore a lot of greens, anything from deep in the ocean green to turquoise. With Giles, he was completely warm toned, so creams and cafes, and camels. With Micheal Shannon‘s character, he’s very monochromatic, black and white, and he started very kind of monochromatic and as he starts to unravel his colors start to get less clear. Within his home life, again being a character that was from the future, from urban life that was stuck in this backwater town, as he put it, he and the family were in those future colors. So, when you move to his location, you see those colors that are quite distinctive. With Octavia Spencer’s character, the scene for me was bruised fruit, so here’s a woman that is being oppressed by her husband and in a society being oppressed and being a woman, and so I used a kind of feeling and spoke to that with my shoppers and to bring that kind of bruised fruit palette to her wardrobe. Then even though most of the film is in an aged kind of patina with Octavia’s she was a dressmaker, so a lot of her clothes had those little dressmaker notes, those little interesting details that I’ve picked up from period clothing that was even older than the sixties. For me it was really bringing together a combination of design elements to the film regardless of the decade, and that was true to not just color and details, but beautiful pieces that would play within the film. Then [Michael Stuhlbarg‘s character] had two color palettes, as he’s a double agent. He had the work palette and then when he was with the Russians he had more of a brown and green palette. In many cases, we had the same garments, like the same shirting, but if we were in a certain scenario we would use warm tones, and if we were in a cool scenario we would use the cool tones. It was very subtle, but it was something that Guillermo and I felt was a great component to put into the film.
Often actors have a lot of suggestions about what they’re wearing and how it relates to the character. Did any of the actors have any requests or anything specific that they wanted with their costumes?
No. I think what we wanted to do was validate the characters, and the process of because almost everything was built for the film. We built hats, shoes, belts, ties, suits and overcoats so it really was about validating the character with the choices, enhancing their presence in the film, which gave them further foundation for how they’re playing. And I have to say that every actor was really quite thrilled with what we were putting together. So, yeah, I mean it was special that way.
At one point Eliza breaks sort of the conventions of what she’s wearing with this very sharp red coat. Can you talk about that choice?
Yes. She starts off the film being in the shadows of society and being an outsider. There was a scene at the beginning of the film where she looks at the red shoes in the store window and so that is where it comes from. For a woman who had a wall of shoes – she had quite a shoe fetish – she was also a woman that only wore her black shoes. That was something that brought from my mom back in the day where she had lots of shoes but she always saved them. This was the same kind of thing, which I thought was really great. Women were like that. They would buy stuff and never wear it. In fact, when I was curating the pieces for the movie we came across an estate sale in which that was exactly it. There was a woman in Philly who had an extensive shoe collection and she never wore them. I’d spoken to Guillermo about that and we found it to be again something that rang kind of true. So, when she actually put on those red shoes it really spoke to a decision by the character that was symbolizing both her resolve and her passion for both the creature and the cause and her strength. Then that kind of grew into the other accessories and, finally, the coat.
Is there one particular piece of clothing or outfit that you’re most proud of when you watch the movie now?
I’m proud of it all, but I think that the black and white segment with the sequined lace dress, the ode to Ginger Rogers, was pretty incredible. It was so opposite from the rest of the film and we were working on that dress concurrent to filming the rest of the movie. The fabric alone on that dress was just shy of $10,000, so it was something. We had lace that was $450 a meter which I had to cut up and use as an applique and then underneath that there was silk chiffon and sequins. It was a four-layer cake dress, so to speak, with seven layers of [layering] underneath. That was pretty special, not only as a design element, but also the fact that it was used in a dance number. Watching Sally do her rehearsals, making sure that the dress was going to work for the number. We worked in half scale to begin with to really define the design lines because of the prohibitive cost of the fabrics. There was a maquette done of that dress. Once Guillermo was happy and we were all happy with it, we proceeded with the full scale. It was pretty special little segment which is really under two minutes in the film, but I thought was quite effective.
Yeah, it’s gorgeous. I spoke to “Mudbound’s” Rachel Morrison who when she got her Cinematography nomination she sort of joked with that when you work on a project like that film or like “The Shape of Water” it makes it hard sometimes to go back to – in her case – shooting something in a contemporary New York apartment. Has the experience of doing “Shape of Water” made you want to do more period films or more prestige or more fantasy films?
I’m working right now on a Netflix feature with Chris Columbus, and it’s called “The Christmas Chronicles” and it’s a Christmas movie with Kurt Russell playing Santa Claus, which is quite different obviously than what “Shape of Water” is. But I’m working with Paul Austerberry, the production designer, again on this, which would make our third project together, so it’s pretty sweet. Obviously there are jobs that one loves more than others. I think to work with such an incredible visionary like Guillermo on a passion project, this was not a big-budget movie, with him working on this movie a lot of favors were put in play. I think you can see a lot of love was put into it which I would imagine very similar to “Mudbound.” When you pour your heart and soul into something the rewards are like just ongoing. For me, that’s a gift. It was a gift to be asked to do the movie, it was a gift to do the movie, it’s been a gift to be recognized for the movie and honestly regardless of what happens I’ll never forget this project.
“The Shape of Water” is still playing nationwide.
