wardrobe!
dressing for
THE PART
Academy Award–winning costume designer Sandy Powell outfits some of the silver screen’s biggest names, inspiring audiences around the globe. By Darcey Gohring Great costumes can bring a story to life. Before an actor even utters a word, his or her clothes can convey a time period, a location, a personality and an overall mood. In the right hands, a film’s wardrobe can not only transport audiences but also inspire real-life fashion trends. And when some of Hollywood’s biggest names are looking to make a statement, one woman is on the top of the list: award-winning British costume designer Sandy Powell. The London-born creative has worked on almost 40 films since the 1980s. In that time, she has garnered 14 Oscar nominations (even competing against herself one year), making her the most nominated living artist in her field. To put it in terms most of us can understand, Powell has won the same number of Oscars (three) as Meryl Streep. (Wins were for 2009’s The Young Victoria, 2004’s The Aviator and 1998’s Shakespeare in Love.) A favorite of director Martin Scorsese, the 59-year-old has collaborated with him on such films as Gangs of New York, The Wolf of Wall Street, Hugo and last year’s The Irishman. A master at her craft, Powell has a knack for making wardrobes in period films somehow
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feel fresh and current. There is always a bit of an edge to them. When she begins a project, she says her process is much the same whether it is a blockbuster or an indie film. The first step is to read the script and meet with the director. Then the real work begins—research, research and more research. “I have an extensive collection of books and photography: contemporary and period fashion, street photography, photojournalism,” she explains. “I plow through those, building up catalogs of images directly related to the period or just looking for pure inspiration.” In truth, for Powell the actual designing of the clothes is the smallest part of the process. She cites one example from her work on 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns. She created a whopping 448 looks for the movie, but it was the details that were most time-consuming. In the film, Meryl Streep’s character, inspired by the artistic bohemians of the early 20th century, had a scene that required a lot of movement. For the character’s complicated, handmade costume, the challenge Powell didn’t see coming was finding a material from which to fabricate bracelets that would not make a lot of noise.
KILGO RE TRO UT S P RING/S U M M ER 2020
After much trial and error, Powell’s solution was to cast them in rubber. In the 2018 dark comedy The Favourite, she had the challenge of dressing stars Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman in over-the-top versions of 18thcentury English clothes—with a slim budget and a tight timeline. “We weren’t making a conventional historical film,” Powell told British Vogue in 2019. “Silhouette-wise, there is nothing wrong with how the costumes were made. But, fabric-wise, artistic license was taken. It adds to the general feeling of the film.” She also kept the palette to mostly black and white, and with her creative vision the result was what Powell describes as a punk-rock version of a royal court. The latest Powell work to hit the big screen is The Glorias: A Life on the Road, a look at the life of feminist activist Gloria Steinem. For that 2020 release, Powell designed looks beginning in the 1940s and extending all the way to the present day. Once again, her costumes don’t exactly steal the scenes—they’re not supposed to do that—but they surely make her talented presence felt.
