Oscars 2014: Interviews with costume design nominees
A sheer gunmetal sequin evening gown designed by Michael Wilkinson for "American Hustle" (left), set in the 1970s; and a costume sketch by Michael O'Connor for "The Invisible Woman," about the Victorian-Era affair of Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan.
They are two of five films nominated for this year's Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
Click through this gallery to view costume sketches and photos, and to read interviews with the nominees.
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan
"American Hustle"
Michael Wilkinson's credits range from character studies like "American Splendor" and "Babel," to big-budget epics and fantasies like "300," "Tron: Legacy," "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn," and "Man of Steel."
He received his first Oscar nomination for "American Hustle," David O. Russell's comedy-drama about con artists recruited by the FBI to help in a sting operation.
"American Hustle"
Wilkinson told CBS News what attracted him to the script was the "fascinating relationship the characters had with their clothes," as well as how "idiosyncratic and out-of-the-box all these characters were - they were highly original."
"American Hustle"
Although the film featured vintage fashions from the late seventies, Michael Wilkinson designed about half of the outfits worn by the principal cast, including these very revealing gowns for Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams.
"American Hustle"
Wilkinson researched film, books and photographers of the late 1970s, and acquired vintage clothes from fashion house vaults, collectors, and vintage clothing shops:
"We used lots of Halston, for example; lots of Diane von Furstenberg, Gucci, we have some Bob Mackie pieces in there, Yves St. Laurent, Christian Dior - lots of different designers that were really hitting their stride in the late 1970s."
"American Hustle"
"We tried to use as many real pieces from the period as possible, to make sure that we were really hitting the mark, as far as getting the sense of the grittiness and the sexiness and the glamour of the period," said Wilkinson.
"But at a certain point, because the characters were very idiosyncratic, we were trying to present them in a very, very specific way. [Also], the clothes are now 30 or 40 years older, they're either the wrong color, or a little worse for wear, they hadn't survived very well, so we wanted to make sure that we had a freshness and a high impact."
Left: A mix of Amy Adams' vintage clothing and accessories by Valentino, Yves St. Laurent, Diane Von Furstenberg and St. John, with new pieces designed for the film by Michael Wilkinson.
"American Hustle"
"American Hustle"
Wilkinson described the challenge of representing characters "playing" characters: "For example, with Amy Adams' character, she wants to present herself to the world as a very sophisticated woman from England with incredibly established banking connections, possible links to aristocracy. But she was a woman from a very small town in America, and her only reference to that would really be magazines, perhaps TV, perhaps reaching into her imagination."
Adams' persona of Lady Edith Greensly was created out of beautiful fabrics: "We used lots of silks and ultra-suedes and leathers and very luxurious furs," said Wilkinson. "But you could argue that the cuts of the clothes were perhaps not what an English blueblood woman would wear. They're very provocative, very low-plunging, they’re perhaps a little sheerer than a full-blown English aristocrat would wear.
"So there's a sense of her fantasy of who she wanted to be sort of crossing that line of giving clues to the audience: is this the woman that we think she is?"
"American Hustle"
Illustration by Warren Manser of Amy Adams wearing a Michael Wilkinson design for "American Hustle."
Wilkinson said Adams "really took it all in her stride. She loved the idea that there's a duality to these provocative clothes - on the one hand they portray a supreme confidence, that you're feeling great about yourself, and you're putting yourself out there; but in another sense there's a fragility and vulnerability to wearing these very sheer fabrics and low cut silhouettes. There's not a lot between you and the world, when you are demanding attention and you're really going out on a limb with these costume choices. There's an energy and electricity that these created on screen."
"American Hustle"
Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams in "American Hustle," each wearing dresses designed by Michael Wilkinson, with vintage shoes and jewelry.
"American Hustle"
"American Hustle"
Jennifer Lawrence in "American Hustle."
"American Hustle"
A sheer platinum lame disco dress designed by Michael Wilkinson for "American Hustle"'s Studio 54 scenes, worn by Amy Adams with a vintage knee-length fur with shawl collar and Badgley Mischka disco-inspired stilettos. Bradley Cooper wears a Wilkinson-made shirt with vintage suit and scarf.
"It was fascinating for me to see the actors' physical reaction to wearing the clothes of the 70s - they have a certain feel when you wear them, whether it's men wearing the tight pants with the little flair at the hem, or it's the women wearing these rather slinky dresses with very little underwear," said Wilkinson. "They kind of make you walk and feel a certain way about yourself and it was really great to see that transformation when people tried on these clothes in the fitting room. They felt what a three-piece polyester suit felt like, or what a silk shirt felt like. I could really tell how it affected the way they moved or felt about themselves."
"American Hustle"
"12 Years a Slave"
"12 Years a Slave"
"There is not a lot available that I found, and [so] you just go from your imagination," Norris said.
"12 Years a Slave"
Natural fabrics were dyed and then distressed to appear aged or worn at the hems. The costumes even had dirt applied that was acquired from the various filming locations.
"There were five different plantations, all in Louisiana, and oddly enough a lot of them had different color dirt, from really dark brown to light sand color - don't ask why," Norris said. "And we were constantly dealing with the daily rain and the heat, and then it would turn to mud."
"12 Years a Slave"
"12 Years a Slave"
In flashback scenes Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was a noted musician in Upstate New York. "Men's suits hadn’t come in yet, so you still had three separates pieces - pants, vest, and jacket," said Norris
"12 Years a Slave"
"12 Years a Slave"
Sarah Paulson as Mistress Epps in "12 Years a Slave." "I loved dressing her because she has the perfect figure for those types of clothes," said Norris. "And she enjoyed them."
"12 Years a Slave"
One of her biggest surprises from her research about the pre-Civil War era was how much of quality was actually available: "Because the ships came over from England and France and brought really good fabrics with them, [along with] Twinings tea and sugar. People think most people didn't have a lot [then], and they actually did."
"12 Years a Slave"
Clothes for female slaves would more than likely be hand-me-downs. "When you know the slave owners were responsible for clothing them and feeding them, you understood that it was cast-down clothes," said Norris, who worked backwards - designing clothes that would have been worn by a plantation owner's wife, daughters or maids 10 or 20 years earlier than the film's 1850s setting, then distressed to appear aged and worn down.
"12 Years a Slave"
Norris said Patsey's clothes would have come from Mistress
Epps, wife of the plantation owner, Edwin Epps - adding another dimension to
her jealousy about her husband's attentions paid to the beautiful slave.
"12 Years a Slave"
"12 Years a Slave"
Norris said the reason why slaves did not typically exhibit African influences in their clothing was because they were transported to America naked, as slave traders removed all influences of their lives and origins. "I was always very curious as to why you didn’t have more of that [African] look, because it wasn't allowed," she said.
In one scene Patsey visits a black woman (Alfre Woodard) who has a privileged position owing to her relationship with a plantation owner. "That dress to me was a little more African in color, in print," said Norris, who described it as a way to "sneak a little bit of a look back in."
"12 Years a Slave"
Norris said there was no accommodating the actors to the heat, which she described as "just awful. There's no way to be comfortable, so you might as well give over to it. It probably helped [the actors] in an odd sort of way, 'cause your walk is not very frisky."
"The Grandmaster"
"I cannot separate costumes and sets because for me, those two things are coherent," Chang told Fionnuala Hannigan, author of "Filmcraft: Production Design."
"The Grandmaster"
Chang has a long-standing relationship with the director,
whose past films ("Chungking Express," "In the Mood for
Love," "2046") were much more intimate affairs.
For "The Grandmaster," Chang worked more than four years, during which he and his team created more than 1,000 costumes.
"The Grandmaster"
The brothel scenes alone required more than 200 costumes.
"The Grandmaster"
Breaks in production were necessitated either to build the elaborate sets, or as a result of actors' injuries. (Star Tony Leung broke his arm twice during training.)
"The Grandmaster"
Some costumes might require several copies in order to endure physically-demanding fight scenes.
"The Grandmaster"
"The Grandmaster"
Chang also purchased vintage clothes (his sources included eBay), which he took apart to fashion new pieces using the original fabrics.
"The Grandmaster"
For the film's early scenes, in which divisions between Northern and Southern martial arts styles are the basis of a master competition, Chang studied period photographs that revealed regional Chinese fashions. "We wanted every button, every ribbon, every piece of embroidery and lace, every type of fabric to be completely authentic," Chang told Variety's Iain Blair. "For instance, the fabric and materials they use in the north are very different from the ones in the south."
"The Grandmaster"
"The Grandmaster"
The elegant black costumes used silks, linens and wool.
"The Grandmaster"
"The Invisible Woman"
Left: Costume design for Nelly Ternan by Michael O'Connor.
Charles Dicksn and Ellen Ternan
"In terms of finding references, it was simpler in a way," Michael O'Connor told CBS News. "Whereas 'Jane Eyre' is fiction, these are real people, so straightaway we know there are pictures of them, so there's your starting point: to look at the references of the real people."
However, existing photos of Charles Dickens, Nelly Ternan and her family, and others in their circle were not always helpful, as they were created in different decades, with different fashions.
An illustration of Dickens from the 1840s, said O'Connor, wouldn't be appropriate for designing the 1850s or 1860s. "So it never quite fit. You couldn't copy [it], because I would know that that topcoat, for example, was the wrong shape."
"The Invisible Woman"
Costume design by Michael O'Connor.
The character of Ellen Ternan progressed through the film from a young girl to a married woman with a child, but did so without extensive makeup or prosthetics - her maturation was reflected in part by her clothes.
"The Invisible Woman"
"When we first see her she's a small mouse-like girl - a pretty girl, not too pretty, not too talented and kind of unremarkable really," said O'Connor. "Her mother is a very talented and famous actress, her older sister is a famous actress and a successful one, the other sister is known for her beauty, and so there's poor Ellen without much gift in either way."
"The Invisible Woman"
"We wanted to start her off subtle and grey in everything when she's in the early years," said O'Connor, who incorporated Dickens' own taste into her wardrobe, based in part on the descriptions of clothes in his novels.
"We know Dickens liked girls in pale pinks and pale greens, so that's why her evening dress in Manchester is pale green … and why she had lilac gloves and the lilac bonnet, because we knew they were things that Dickens thought of women, that they should be floral, lilac, pink and green.
"So I said we should use that. It should be such a thing Dickens almost can't help spot you."
"The Invisible Woman"
"To help the aging thing, she's in a different shape, she's in the bustle shape, and the idea was to put her into dark, heavier clothes," said O'Connor, "to make her sort of more authoritative, more serious and more somber. It's a way of making her seem maturer."
"The Invisible Woman"
"The Invisible Woman"
"The Invisible Woman"
"The Invisible Woman"
"The Invisible Woman"
O'Connor said there were paintings of Catherine Dickens dating from the 1830s, but little from the period when she was rejected by her husband. For reference he used portraits of other, similarly-built women of her generation.
"In those days if a woman was of a certain size that didn’t stop them trimming their clothes to within an inch of their lives," he said. "[Today], maybe someone might try to disguise something about them, but they didn’t back them."
"The Invisible Woman"
Joanna Scanlon as Catherine Dickens. Costume design by Michael O'Connor
"The Invisible Woman"
How important was the accuracy of wardrobe for the actors?
"I think for Ralph it's probably more important than any other actor in the film," said O'Connor, "because Ralph [as the director] has probably felt the need to understand it more, has spent longer looking into it. That was part of our dialogue.
"For example, the cut of a man's coat, a frockcoat or trousers, I'd say these trousers were exactly right for the period, and I'd have to explain a lot as to why they were. [Because] Ralph would say, 'Well, why are they like that? Can’t they be wider or narrower at the bottom?' So I'd have to put it in context."
"The Invisible Woman"
In addition to being a writer, Dickens was also an actor - and, as a very public figure, was quite attuned to making fashion statements. "I think it's also the generation he was," said O'Connor. "He's like Disraeli - they're a similar age. There are descriptions of Disraeli when he was younger with canary yellow trousers and his multi-colored waistcoat. They were quite dandy, some of these guys, and Dickens was of that time to be a bit dandy.
"He seemed to follow fashion because [while] some of the men his same age stuck to the old-fashioned frock coats, Dickens abandoned that (apart from formal occasions). He's wearing more casual suits, which is quite a young man's thing to do, and neckties. People would comment that they'd bumped into him in the Strand and he was wearing this, that and the other thing. He was cutting a dash."
"The Great Gatsby"
Production designer and costumer Catherine Martin, who won two Oscars for "Moulin Rouge," received her third Academy Award nomination for costume design for the glorious excess of "The Great Gatsby," the 3-D spectacle based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless novel.
Martin says the visual philosophy she employed for the film originates from the vision of her husband, director Baz Luhrmann, who wanted a mash-up of visual and musical styles, extending from the 1920s Jazz Age to contemporary hip hop.
"As a director, he's a visualist," she told CBS News' Gayle King. "One of the very first things he came with was he really did not want New York to feel nostalgic. So he wanted it to feel modern and sexy, as if Zelda and Scott were seeing this world in 1925 [when Fitzgerald's novel was published], or 1922, when the movie is set."
"The Great Gatsby"
"The Great Gatsby"
For the lavish party scenes, Brooks Brothers supplied 1,200 men's outfits, while Miuccia Prada provided dozens of dresses.
"The Great Gatsby"
"The Great Gatsby"
"The Great Gatsby"
Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in "The Great Gatsby." Costumes by Catherine Martin.
"The Great Gatsby"
Fitzgerald wrote of Gatsby's "absurd pink suits," which Martin discovered were not a fiction: Brooks Brothers did manufacture pink seersucker suits in the early 20th century.
"Do I really have to wear a pink suit?" Leonardo DiCaprio asked the director determined to adhere to the novel's prose.
"Yes," was the reply.
"The Great Gatsby"
Maguire, as Nick Carraway, looks (in the director's words) "a little bit last-century," compared to the moneyed Long Island set.
"The Great Gatsby"
"The Great Gatsby"
"The Great Gatsby"
Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Debicki in "The Great Gatsby." Costume design by Catherine Martin.
"The Great Gatsby"
Catherine Martin's costumes for "The Great Gatsby."
The Oscar for Best Costume Design will be presented at the 86th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 2, 2014.
For more info:
"American Hustle" (Official site)
"The Grandmaster" (Official site)
"The Great Gatsby" (Official site)
"The Invisible Woman" (Official site)
"12 Years a Slave" (Official site)
Complete CBSNews.com coverage of the Academy Awards
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan