If you want someone to feel warm, you dress them in a warm color and put a warm light on them and you get the picture. Sometimes, all that needs pushing a little bit to help tell the story.
I've always loved movies, art and clothes.
I had to work out that it was something that could move, without having everybody in spray painted leotards.
Each simian had a much different body suit, so besides trying to define class across species, there was a definite attempt to dress each group in different styles.
As a designer, you have to solve a lot of problems. Even though people are wearing clothes that are supposed to look beautiful, they'll have to do all kinds of things.
I have always loved beautiful leather objects, especially the detail that goes into designing them both inside and out.
I am always looking for ideas, whether it is in art on the street or in my world travels. It comes to me randomly and unexpectedly.
The exposure I have had to beautiful materials across the world, from Japan to Italy, enables me to pull design ideas together. This, combined with years of historical research, has created a great fountain of ideas for me.
I don't design my own clothes. It's so not what I think about.
For contemporary fashion, I'm a huge fan of so many of the people out there. I think Azzedine Alaia holds up through three generations of very specific, beautiful design. I think Jean Paul Gaultier also is very interesting with a long span.
I always have a moment when I know I'm designing the last costume that gets made for a movie, and it's always been floating up there, but it's kind of the last one. That's always probably the hardest one for me.
When I do period work, I really like to read about the period as much as I like to look at pictures because sometimes the written word is much better at conveying what their lives were really like and how much they had and where their clothes came from. Because, a lot of time, people dressed in their Sunday best to pose for a picture.
I'd say probably the most expensive costumes I've ever made were the costumes in 'The Planet of the Apes,' because of the research and development that went into them and the amount of layers.
I have watched 'Project Runway,' but I'm not a devout watcher of it. But I think it's a great show, what I've seen of it, and I think Tim Gunn is a very positive, amazing guy.
People like to stir up the fashion vs. costume world, and I think what they mean by 'too costumey' is that it's too much, or not real enough for everyday wear. You couldn't say that about John Galliano's shows, right? I mean, they're awesome, and they're total costume.
I worked in fashion, but I worked more in the sales side of fashion than in design. I was an assistant buyer for a department store back in the '70s and the early years of Saint Laurent. And I used to have a lot of private clients that I bought for.
I wanted to be a painter when I was a kid. And then, I had to make a living. I had a child when I was in high school, so I kind of had that work phase in my life.
The thing that's great about being a costume designer is you never know what's going to be next; you never what world you are going to enter.
One of the challenges with period costumes is, on a technical level, making the scale of different periods work on contemporary bodies. We're much bigger than what people were in older times.
As for futuristic costumes, I loved doing 'Gattaca' because I'm a minimalist at heart, and it's a very minimal film. Plus, with Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke and Jude Law, how could you go wrong?
