I'm Sandy Powell and I'm a costume designer.
My earliest memories of being interested in clothes
and costumes to an extent, was very, very young.
And I checked in with my mother on this.
Apparently I was five when I made my first outfit,
which was a bikini.
And she said I tried really hard.
But by the time I was five, I was also making dolls clothes.
I learned to sew at a very young age because I was brought up in the sixties.
And my mother used to make all my clothes and for my sister also.
And so we were sort of brought up around
the sewing machine, going, choosing fabrics, looking at patterns
and I was very much involved from a very early age and loved it.
I didn't really consider at such an early age
that there was a job to be had, you know, designing, making clothes.
Although I absolutely loved fashion and would devour my mum's
fashion magazines during the sixties and seventies.
I used to make my own fashion magazines also.
But I was also brought up with cinema and theatre and loved
going to both of those things and being involved in as a kid at school,
being involved in drama projects. And I think I was always making things.
I was always doing something with my hands.
So I suppose I knew that's what I loved doing,
but I didn't necessarily associate that with what you could do for a living.
I always thought you had to do something sensible for a living.
So it wasn't until
my teens, my
early teens really, and suddenly being aware of
the visuals in the cinema. I went to see Death in Venice
age 14 and fell in love.
I fell in love with
Björn Andrésen, the guy who was playing, and I forgotten his name.
Tadzio! Tadzio. And also Dirk Bogarde and the look of the film.
I loved how Dirk Bogarde looked,
I love the makeup. I love the makeup falling off his face.
And then of course, I love the fantastic costumes
that the women wore with the huge hats.
And I saw that six or seven times.
I used to bunk off school to go and see it with my friend. Round about the same time,
a little bit later, I went to the theatre and saw a production called Flowers
by a choreographer, an artist called Lindsay Kemp.
And that was the moment that changed my life.
That was the moment when I thought,
"this is the world I want to
be part of", creating stories, creating images.
I was extremely fortunate, I think, to have met
the people who turned out to be my mentors at a very young age.
I saw Lindsay Kemp in the theatre when I was 16,
and by the time I was 21 I'd met him.
And that's because I sort of went out of my way to meet him.
He was actually doing dance classes at the Pineapple Dance studio in Covent
Garden, and I took myself off and did dance classes with him.
I did art school for a couple of years, met Lindsay Kemp
in the summer of the end of my second year and just sort of
announced that I loved his work, was a huge fan,
and could I come and join him? And for some reason he said yes.
He said, “Don't go back to college.
Come and work with me.”
So I called my tutors and I said, “Can have a year out before my final year?
I want to go and do some work.”
And that's exactly what I did.
I went to work for him and never looked back. Never went back to college,
never looked back and did theatre and dance
for the first few years of my career.
I've just had unbelievable luck.
I mean, extraordinarily lucky to have met first Lindsay Kemp
and then shortly after that I met Derek Jarman,
both of whom were amazingly generous
with their knowledge and trust and took me under their wing.
I don't think
I would have done anything differently.
So I can't think of any piece of advice I wished I'd had, actually.
I think the lesson I learned was to
take risks.
Ask somebody.
The worst that anybody can say to you is “No”.
So I approached both Lindsay Kemp and Derek Jarman
in the hope of work, in the hope
of being part of their world and learning from them.
And they both said, “yes”.
And I think if I'd been more timid
and not asked, I could have regretted that for the rest of my life.
I think you have to jump in to the deep end always.
How I approach each project depends entirely on the nature of the project.
It depends on the director's vision, because ultimately
I'm working for the director to help create their vision.
So, if the purpose of the project is to be set in a historical period
and be absolutely accurate, as accurate as possible--
For instance, The Young Victoria was about, you know,
a real person in a real time that we all know about.
That look was not stylised.
It had to look believable for the period.
I mean, of course, nothing is ever absolutely 100%
how it was, because we don't have the same materials,
we don't have the same means of making things.
The machinery is different now.
Nothing is as fine as it was in the Victorian age.
Like the fabrics were finer, the thread was finer, people were smaller,
it was all very different.
So what I can do is do an approximation.
I can do the sort of 20th, 21st century version of Victorian.
Whereas a film
like The Favourite, which again is about a real person, a real monarch,
in England in a real time, was different.
It was heightened.
The whole feeling of it was hightened because the script itself
was sort of stylised. The dialogue was heightened.
So I knew from the off -- and the fact that the director was Yorgos Lanthimos --
that it wasn't going to be by the book, it wasn't going to be conventional.
So there was room for manoeuvre,
there was room for artistic license, there was room to sort of
think outside the box really, and
be more interesting and stylised and heightened.
There's only a very small part of the work
when you're designing costumes for a film that is done in a solitary way.
I'm hardly ever alone.
The only time I'm working alone is like the first time
I read the script, or if I'm working on the script
or if I'm doing my own research, looking through books, collecting images.
Apart from that, I'm surrounded by people, by a team of people
who I couldn't be without.
So I'm either working with my own department,
which will be assistant supervisors, cutters,
stitchers, embroiderers, painters.
I mean, there are numerous, numerous people that make up the department
to actually help create the costumes once they're designed.
But of course, the entire time you're working with the director
and with the other heads of department. With the production design,
with hair and makeup and the cinematography
especially. It's, it’s -- the whole thing is a collaboration.
It's not a solitary job at all.
The role of the costume designer in terms
of bringing a character to life is to help make that character believable.
You know, we want the audience to understand that character
and forget they're looking at the actor.
We don't want them to be thinking, Oh, that's whoever.
That's Leonardo DiCaprio.
No, that's not Leonardo DiCaprio. That's Howard Hughes.
We don't want people to be seeing Emily Blunt.
We want them to be seeing Queen Victoria.
So it's absolutely crucial that we are making those characters
believable. And also making the actors comfortable
and make them believe that they have that character.
I mean, one of the most important
qualities to have as a costume designer is
the means to communicate and express yourself.
Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be verbally.
I mean, it can be visually, which is pretty much how I operate.
I mean, the whole of the film industry is about communication.
Things are successful
if communication runs smoothly and is good.
So it's really important to establish a relationship very early on with an actor
in order to gain their trust.
And gaining trust really is probably the most important part of it.
Once you've got that, then you're sort of halfway there.
It's really important that
I consider the actor’s opinion.
I mean, if I'm trying something on,
if I have an idea and we've gone so far down the road with it
and we're having a fitting and then the actor feels uncomfortable
or has another idea about the direction that character should go,
you have to be completely open to that conversation and be prepared to change it
if A) they're going to say, “I'm really uncomfortable with this,”
or I think this is a good idea, maybe they can convince you.
And that's the part of the job that I really enjoy.
I really enjoy the dialogue.
I actually enjoy being challenged because quite often
you come up with a better solution than the one you had.
I can't I can't pick one costume I'm particularly proud of
because it's, you know, it's like asking someone to pick their favourite child.
You can't.
There have been so many and each one has its own challenges.
I mean, some are easier than others, but the same amount of work
and thought process has gone into every single one.
And at the time, in every job, when there is a costume
that's taken a long time and you see it and it's looking exactly how you want it
to look or better, sometimes you think, Wow, that's my favourite ever.
But then another one will come along and then that will be your favourite.
There's not one costume and I would hate to say
I would hate to pick one and say This is it.
Because I wouldn't want to sum up my entire career with one costume.
I suppose I enjoy all challenge.
Usually the challenge is how are we going to do this for the money in the time?
That is usually the challenge.
And I would say every costume designer is going to say the same thing
regardless of the size of the project you're working on
is you on a very low budget little film.
There's never enough money, and even if you're in a big one,
there might be enough money, but there might not be enough time.
And you've got to do like a thousand times
more costumes probably than the small one.
So you're always coming up against the same obstacles and problems to solve.
And that's the challenge. I guess the challenge is the problems to solve
all the challenges, finding a new way of doing something.
Challenges don't necessarily get easier, but
I think with age and experience,
I'm less intimidated by certain situations.
I finally think, “actually, I know what I'm talking about now.”
So... And I know
not to panic. And I know that whatever happens,
you're never going to send an actor out onto the set naked.
They're always going to get there with clothes on and hopefully look good.
The one misconception about costume design probably is that it's glamorous.
There's not one iota of glamour involved.
I mean, it's glamorous the day of the premiere,
you know, if you happen to be there and everything's looking marvellous
and sparkly and fabulous and everybody is loving it,
but the actual day to day grind of doing the job
has not one ounce of glamour in it whatsoever.
I think what I love about my job costume design within the film
industry is actually not knowing what the next thing is going to be.
I like that uncertainty of thinking it could be anything,
it could be any period, it could be any subject.
And I like that surprise and the anticipation of not knowing what it is.
I think my creative goal has always been
to take risks
and not be totally conventional.
Try and be different. Trying to be
one step ahead and
keep excited, not get bored.
And I'm still excited.
I still love what I do. And
until that stops, I hope I can continue doing this job
The day I get bored, I'll stop.