Dressing Reese: Our Q&A with the costume maven behind the new film Water for Elephants
Flapper enthusiasts (and R-Patz devotees) rejoice! The much-anticipated romantic drama, Water for Elephants, finally opens next Friday April 22nd. Based on Sara Gruen’s novel of the same name, Elephants tells the story of two star-crossed lovers who bond over their shared care of a circus elephant during the Great Depression.
The festooned celebration of circus days gone by casts Reese Witherspoon as the spectacle’s star and Robert Pattinson as her awe struck paramour. Its not often that a period piece as rich in visuals as this on comes along, a feat which is largely attributed to the costume design of Jacqueline West, a designer who has already worked on such films as The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons⎯the latter of which she garnered an Oscar nomination for. We were lucky enough to chat with West on her opulent vision for the film as well as how she got to where she is today.
You’ve worked on so many films from contemporary to period pieces, what goes into your process of designing?
I try to be very character driven. I start from the main characters and I just know who they are. It becomes a lot, a lot of research. Then, it’s just a matter of taking the characters once you really know them, shopping at the places that they would get their clothes based on who they were in the times they lived in and what their place in that period happened to be.
Your research for this film in particular must have been so niche. Were there any specific people that you drew from for Reese?
I thought she would maybe looked at a lot of Jean Harlow, [who] was the biggest MGM performer in film and during the peaks of depression, that’s what people did – they looked to those kind of movies like Dinner at 8, Red Dust and some of the different Harlow films, you know just to get out of the sadness and dreariness and dust of their own lives. I looked at Jean Harlow because I thought she was the perfect bottle blonde and she kind of had that look, but yet she had a sauciness about her that I thought Reese’s character would have had.
I read that you prefer to use genuine garments where possible. Were you able to find those costumes, or did you design them?
All of Reese’s clothes, I designed and made. A couple of her at rest, play clothes, we called them, when she was just practicing, or at breakfast, or around the circus, a couple of those were genuines. Mostly all of her costumes, her shoes, her boots, everything we made. Some of the circus costumes were genuine, but most of them we made, the performance costumes. The hoochie coochie girls, most of those were genuines. Wherever I could, I used genuines.
At the very end, at the parade, a friend of mine who had a vintage clothing store in the [San Fernando] Valley found a stash of ‘30s Ringling Brothers circus clothes, and I managed to get them into the show. That made me very happy.
How did you get into costume design?
I was a fashion designer, I had my own clothing line and my own department in Barneys in the ‘90s and a dear, dear friend of mine is an incredible movie director, Philip Kaufman, he [wrote] The Right Stuff, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he headhunted me to do work on Henry & June with him and then I ended up switching businesses, changing careers, I was bitten!
What’s your favourite piece in the film?
That’s so hard… I think I’d say the black dress on Reese (pictured above), and then I have a partiality to the skirts on the horse girls.
What’s your next dream period to tackle?
Well, once Elephants was kind of a dream project for me just because I’ve always wanted to do the ‘30s, and the New World, because I have Native American romantic dementia. Getting to do that was the project of a lifetime. Now, I’m really dying to do a really dark revision of Western.
In the meantime, I’m tackling a sci-fi film, which I’ve never done, with Joseph Kosinki who did Tron… I have to know I can do it, you know?
 rejoice! The much-anticipated romantic drama, Water for Elephants, finally opens next Friday April 22nd. Based on Sara Gruen’s novel of the same name, Elephants tells the story of two star-crossed lovers who bond over their shared care of a circus elephant during the Great Depression.
The festooned celebration of circus days gone by casts Reese Witherspoon as the spectacle’s star and Robert Pattinson as her awe struck paramour. Its not often that a period piece as rich in visuals as this on comes along, a feat which is largely attributed to the costume design of Jacqueline West, a designer who has already worked on such films as The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons⎯the latter of which she garnered an Oscar nomination for. We were lucky enough to chat with West on her opulent vision for the film as well as how she got to where she is today.
Read the interview »
You’ve worked on so many films from contemporary to period pieces, what goes into your process of designing?
I try to be very character driven. I start from the main characters and I just know who they are. It becomes a lot, a lot of research. Then, it’s just a matter of taking the characters once you really know them, shopping at the places that they would get their clothes based on who they were in the times they lived in and what their place in that period happened to be.
Your research for this film in particular must have been so niche. Were there any specific people that you drew from for Reese?
I thought she would maybe looked at a lot of Jean Harlow, [who] was the biggest MGM performer in film and during the peaks of depression, that’s what people did – they looked to those kind of movies like Dinner at 8, Red Dust and some of the different Harlow films, you know just to get out of the sadness and dreariness and dust of their own lives. I looked at Jean Harlow because I thought she was the perfect bottle blonde and she kind of had that look, but yet she had a sauciness about her that I thought Reese’s character would have had.
I read that you prefer to use genuine garments where possible. Were you able to find those costumes, or did you design them?
All of Reese’s clothes, I designed and made. A couple of her at rest, play clothes, we called them, when she was just practicing, or at breakfast, or around the circus, a couple of those were genuines. Mostly all of her costumes, her shoes, her boots, everything we made. Some of the circus costumes were genuine, but most of them we made, the performance costumes. The hoochie coochie girls, most of those were genuines. Wherever I could, I used genuines.
At the very end, at the parade, a friend of mine who had a vintage clothing store in the [San Fernando] Valley found a stash of ‘30s Ringling Brothers circus clothes, and I managed to get them into the show. That made me very happy.
How did you get into costume design?
I was a fashion designer, I had my own clothing line and my own department in Barneys in the ‘90s and a dear, dear friend of mine is an incredible movie director, Philip Kaufman, he [wrote] The Right Stuff, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he headhunted me to do work on Henry & June with him and then I ended up switching businesses, changing careers, I was bitten!
What’s your favourite piece in the film?
That’s so hard… I think I’d say the black dress on Reese (pictured above), and then I have a partiality to the skirts on the horse girls.
What’s your next dream period to tackle?
Well, once Elephants was kind of a dream project for me just because I’ve always wanted to do the ‘30s, and the New World, because I have Native American romantic dementia. Getting to do that was the project of a lifetime. Now, I’m really dying to do a really dark revision of Western.
In the meantime, I’m tackling a sci-fi film, which I’ve never done, with Joseph Kosinki who did Tron… I have to know I can do it, you know?){kind=link}