Friday, November 24, 2023
Sophie Canale (Saltburn) costume design interview
GoldDerby: Costume designers usually go into an interview with a pitchbook of ideas and sketches and their vision for the project. Sophie Canale went into her meeting with Emerald Fennell for “Saltburn,” which takes place in the mid-2000s, with Facebook photos. “It was my mood board for my interviews,”
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I love when people use real life material from the past to make the designs of costumes. Using old facebook posts and talking about the fact that everyone used to post everything on facebook and all of the inspiration that they have for the performance just from one source is so impactful. It is real. It is authentic in a sense that everyone, well everyone that was alive and on the internet, remembers that era of fashion. Where juicy couture and uggs and big chunky jewelry was a statement. The use of real life impactful fashion moments being used in a performance is important so the context of the play is understood. Using the different tactic of not having any specific drawing but just a mood board is very interesting because I would think that many production teams want specific designs for specific scenes that the different characters are in to see the progression of the costumes. But the board also does make sense because it is so popular to make a pinterest board nowadays that it came across perfectly fine.
Interviews like this are all extremely fascinating, I love hearing the thought process that goes into creating. It was also very interesting how costume designers have to treat 10-20 years ago as if they’re a time period of their own which I guess they kind of are. But just the shear intricacies that are involved with designing something so recent is astounding. I haven’t done much work in time periods outside of the present and so my experience is pretty much just seeing them figure out what people would wear in certain contexts now. I’d be fascinated to be in one of the design meetings for that show just to hear the different ideas that were floating around. I also think the possibilities for using past “time periods” in current time plays could help develop a character as someone with outdated style or who just prefers that era of clothing. It’s all really interesting.
To think about costumes this way is so cool and intricate to me. While I am a clothes lover and can appreciate a good fit, I don’t love costumes and costume design. Sophia Canale has a brilliant mind for this. She designed costumes for the new movie “Saltburn.” Canale didn't just take ideas and images, she deep dove into Facebook. Media is super important to look at and reference when taking inspiration from a time period. It is how trends were spread and fashion developed, unfortunately sometimes. Media also made people basic and similar. The idea of a copycat is mostly flattery but also causes for unoriginality. Sophie takes advantage of this and uses it to find the trends of the 2000s. This included a variety of tacky prints and velvet track suits. It was really a game of dress-up for some people. I think it is a cool style, and I know some people are ‘bringing back y2k’ but some of the trends can stay in the past in my opinion.
I know nothing about the actual plot and content of Saltburn, but I’ve heard it’s a pretty cool pretty interesting and kinda weird movie. From how the movie is described within this article, it sounds pretty cool. I think it’s really cool how the costume designer researched literal Facebook posts and images in order to put together a mood board and research images. It’s kind of weird to think about how stuff like social media can now, fairly easily, be used as a method of “historical research.” It’s weird to think about 2006-ish as a historical time that requires period accurate clothing design, but obviously, the trends and fashion of that time are different from the trends and fashion of today. So when does an old trend from a while ago become historical clothing? Probably when it’s older than 2006, but still. Regardless, I think that the costumes and color palette of this show sounds super cool.
Yay, a video interview and an article!!! I loved getting to watch a video interview with an article. I love love love getting to actually watch designers talk about their process. It is something so personal and I love how you can see the passion behind the work in the videos. I also find it a little bit of a, forgive my French, mind-fuck, how the clothing that I grew up around is now a distinct “decade” look. I feel very young a lot of the time and this actually made me feel old which was wild. This is also one of the first interviews I’ve seen where the designer used social media photos as a form of research. It was also a fascinating point how the age of the characters affects how trendy or recognizable the clothing must be to the decade. It is definitely something to think about as I am designing things in the future.
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