How are you feeling about your Oscar nomination for Nosferatu?
Well, it’s pretty thrilling and fabulous. I was saying to our assistant costume designer, Alima Meyboom, that it’s lovely because it’s the personification of a kiss for everyone in the costume department. It’s also for Robert Eggers because we share this with him. He is such an amazing leader, and he brings out the best in everyone.
What went into creating Count Orlok’s look?
Director Robert Eggers was not thinking about a fantastical creature that is alive, flies, and turns into a bat. His research and interests took him to the folklore origins of Transylvania in Eastern Europe. In that set of beliefs, Nosferatu is undead. Robert went for the all-out, dead, reanimated corpse Orlok. I looked at museum pieces of garments from families like the Esterházys and nobility from the period of 1560 to about 1640. We looked at books that had illustrations of Transylvanian armies. We have the mentee, a large overcoat with long sleeves and beautiful fur lining because he is a nobleman—he can afford the luxury of a heavy overcoat that would keep him warm in stone castles with fireplace heating. We used heavy, luxurious fabrics, gold embellishments, gold threads, gold paint—gold everywhere. So, the garments ended up being the tunic or the dolman that goes underneath. Even that is made up of many layers: fine gossamer, lace overlay on top of velvet with a silk body. It’s rare to find buttons with that embellishment anymore. We had one incredible embroiderer who was able to crochet. We made oversized buttons in a kind of crocheted shape with gossamer gold thread. The massive fur hat came from several different versions of counts from the period. The boots were a real joy. They would have been a leather mule slip-on with a steel heel in the shape of a horseshoe, hollow in the centre, and then a leather sock that would slip into that mule. For safety purposes, I designed them as one piece and buttoned them. Then we “corpsified” the whole thing.
Ellen’s costumes bring out a sense of entrapment. How do you keep the symbolism in mind while designing?
With Ellen’s character, the point that I was trying to make was that she isn’t concerned with clothing. She comes from a wealthy background, but she loves Thomas and just wants to be with him. She has the required number of changes for a woman of her class, but unlike her friend Anna, Ellen is not even in her own home. She’s presumably packed a trunk, so she has a limited amount of clothing. She reuses things on different occasions. Most of the script has her in nightgowns. A lot of thought went into the weights of the nightgown. There were three different weights that I designed. The most transparent and fragile was at the very opening when mature Ellen is in bed. We have scenes of her sleepwalking into the night. It had to be fragile-looking but still conceal enough of her body that it wasn’t too revealing. We also had the gorgeous corset that goes on as this heinous idea of helping the woman by tightening her corset in bed. I discovered the fan-laced corset, so a woman could tighten herself from the front. So, that was a happy piece of information that also allowed Dr Wilhelm Sievers to tighten that corset and be face-to-face with her. That way, the audience can see what’s happening on her face, instead of it being face-down in the bed with a corset that would be tightened from the back.
What goes into making the outfits practical?
We did three identical versions of Orlok’s complete outfit to facilitate a photo double, stunt double, and build costume. I wanted that overcoat to just appear as if it were magically floating on his shoulders when, in fact, every time Bill Skarsgård put it on, it would just fall off because it was so heavy. We had to devise a harness system that went on next to the skin, came out through the tunic, and did a quick release at the shoulders. That made it look like he could move however he wanted, and he didn’t have to worry about it. It also meant that we could get it off very quickly because it was very hot. In combination with all of his prosthetic makeup, it was a steam bath. And Bill was pretty magnificent in it.
What’s it like having this partnership with Robert Eggers?
It’s a dream job because I love research, I love detail, I love to read, and often I bring information to Robert and say that I have found this detail, and it could illuminate this moment in the script or take that scene further. It’s rare for a director-writer and auteur to do so much of their own research. When he’s writing his scripts, he’s already started researching. In his own mind, he goes into the reality of the period that he’s writing in. So, he brings all of that information from the beginning of our collaborations. Every time we start a new project, he brings me up to speed with everything that he’s been thinking about. He’s not just thinking about costume; he’s thinking about location, production design, setting, props—everything. And believe me, he continues to think about all of those things all through the filming. Shooting schedules depend on cast availability, location, and weather. So, the research that we do continues all through the prep period, right up to when we’re shooting. We’re adding, refining, and having “aha” moments.
What’s your process of sketching and sourcing materials…
Usually, I look at images, paintings, woodcuts, or whatever is going to give me information about clothing from the period in which the script is set. Robert’s scripts always have more than one location. The protagonist travels through the countryside, or in the case of The Northman, there are three very distinct acts. I start to join the dots—this piece of information illuminates that, and this story informs that detail. I build a familiarity with the period and the clothing of the period. With Nosferatu, the year before we did the film, we had a slightly different cast combination. I designed costumes for the characters of Ellen Hutter and Anna Harding. I was just starting on Orlok when it was put on hold, and we ended up doing it a year later.
What was it like for The Northman and The Witch?
The Witch was very contained. It was a family of five, and there were crowd scenes, but the whole canvas of the film was much more contained. That was a job of figuring out what we could make with a smaller budget and then finding the materials. For The Lighthouse, because that script was set in a period when photography existed, it was easier to find examples of what I wanted for the front of the shirt or the oilskins. For The Northman, I did 80-odd sketches. It was insane how many sketches there were for that. Nicole Kidman had 12 or 14 different costumes, and there were the berserkers, those fabulous wolf heads with the skins or the bear heads with the skins. There are always happy coincidences—like I know a sculptor who loves doing animals and works with a furrier, that kind of thing. The Northman was Viking Age, so trying to find specific wool or linen fabrics that were woven in specific diamond patterns left me sending emails to Poland and Russia for chain mail or helmets because those countries have dedicated re-enactors and history aficionados who have personally accrued a huge amount of knowledge. That was true also of The Witch, set in a Plymouth Plantation (it’s like a foundation in Massachusetts), and they have a huge amount of knowledge and information. So, we spoke to experts to get an authentic understanding of the setting and period.
What do you hope the audience takes away from your work?
Everybody wants to know, “What are we making? What do we make? And why are you making it like this?” We’re making it like this for all of those details to compound and compound so an audience doesn’t need to even wonder what period they’re in when they’re watching it. Hopefully, that’s what people have responded to.
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