This is the article I am going to be using for the Black Swan DPS, it is a fantastic interview with Amy Westcott, the costume designer for BAFTA nominated Black Swan. It is nominated in this category as well as many more. This article is fantastic for the context of Velvet Liaison as it not only speaks specifically of the Costume Designs for the film but it also goes into a lot of detail on the creative process of this aspect of the film and how it fit in with the rest of the construction of the narrative for screen.
Darren Aronofsky’s new psychological thriller Black Swan centers around the world of New York City Ballet and their opening production of Swan Lake, where two rival ballerinas ñ the ideal White Swan, Nina, and the seductive Black Swan, Lily ñ develop a twisted relationship.
One of the challenges for Aronofsky collaborator Amy Westcott was to create highly individual looks while keeping the movieís costumes true to the ballet world. Costume designers play an important role in feature films; they set the mood, add realism to the storyline and give it personality. Amy brought in ballerinas from ABT and NYCB as consultants to assist in her research, which also included observing the dancers; what they wear for practice and securing collaborations with high-end labels Rodarte and Yumiko. Ahead of its wide release next month, Amy talked to our Dan Bell about working with Darren and recreating ballerinas on film:
Dan: How closely did you collaborate with Darren in Black Swan and how does he work? Does he give you a concept, ideas?
Amy: Darren is very hands on, he really likes to see what’s going on and the motivation behind it, the whys. By the time we start research, he has already been there, he knows what’s going on. The process is dictated by four people; Darren, Matthew Libatique [Cinematographer], ThÈrËse DePrez [Production Designer] and I. We all have a lot of creative talks together, getting different inspirations and pictures, talk about ideas and where we are going. After we sit down a few times, we keep on sending each other emails and different inspirations not necessarily directly related to your line of expertise like say costumes. Even if something doesn’t have to do with costumes, it doesn’t matter, it will feed the inspiration that we all share and then we sit down once a week.
We have a process of discovery about the world we’re working with, like I might say I found out something while watching classes at ABT or, you bring certain things to the table, knowledge that you’ve collected. The four of us do that and it’s really exciting because you are coming at it from four sides: four different brains with different perspectives. For instance my view was more on the details and the things that I learnt from classes and talking to people, slipping around, while ThÈrËse was looking at things in a big scale, the ballerinas as a whole landscape.
Dan: How long did that process take, putting together all these concepts, prepping until you conceptualize the work?
Amy: I started research about 3 months before we started putting things together. You peek your head into the business, in that world, for a long time before you structure things. The process is very different from that of a contemporary film where you can just jump in, because your head has been in contemporary mode for a long time. Here you need to know what you are talking about; you have to know before you start constructing things or start meeting with the actors.
Dan: How much of your time was spent on researching the dance costumes ñ was this the most laborious part of the process?
Amy: It was very important for me to make the everyday dancing realistic. To show the girls that are going to class, and making sure that they have the right layers at the right time, and they put the things on and in a way that read individualism as opposed as what people would think a ballerina would wear. I wouldn’t say it was laborious, I would say it was one of the most fun parts of my job; figuring out what’s right by talking to the girls and sitting in classes at City Ballet and ABT. I would sit by myself in the corner and watch them. I watched them take off what layers and I would take notes and notes, copious notes on the whole process, and make sketches. Diving into a world like that couldn’t be more fun. We went to various ballets, the opening night for City Ballet, and it was just fascinating to see, to have the opportunity to see how people live differently.
Dan: What would you say were your biggest challenges?
Amy: It was a challenge to keep everything as realistic as possible and I’ll tell you why. We worked with so many actual ballerinas that people are watching how we dressed them, so if there was a false move from our part, my part, it was detected right away. It was a very tough audience because they could sniff out a fake. So the challenge was making sure I had the information, making sure if I’d made a call, that it was right.
Dan: Had you seen a lot of ballet before this project?
Amy: I had, although I have to say, I grew up seeing the classics, things everybody has seen like The Nutcracker, Giselle. For the film, we saw things that weren’t exactly traditional ballet. For example, in doing the research we saw Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and other things that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with classics.
Dan: We did sense a touch of Matthew Bourne in the makeup, especially Natalie Portman’s eyes and arms. Is that where it came from?
Amy: Yes, his version was important to our research, his take on ballet is so original and his colours so interesting. Obviously our Swan Lake came out very differently, his is such an extreme Swan Lake version. We covered the whole gamut of what was out there and what people did, so we could set ourselves apart and do something different with it, a meld of different versions but Bourne definitely has some influence. We didn’t want this completely eclectic: we wanted to incorporate traditional aspects but at the same time for it to be more stylish.
Dan: Is that where Rodarte comes into play?
Amy: Yes, their last line, fall 2010 I think, was very vulture-inspired. They had all these black feathers and things like that this was their line, but for us they designed new things, we collaborated the whole time on the more traditional sense on doing the tutus but their line was so interesting in that it was already sort of bird-inspired! Darren and I worked with them, so they redid the costumes and had a fresh take on it, which was great. For the corps the costumes were designed by a great ballet designer named Jack Brown and then Rodarte added pieces to that, to make it work with their black and white swans. But for the principals they completely did the costumes from scratch on their own. They were fully functioning ballet costumes.
Dan: How did you go about characterizing Nina and Lily, polar opposites who are also twin souls?
Amy: They were almost cliché in the sense of pink for Nina and grey and black for Lily. And then we carefully worked in some grey into Nina and slowly worked in some pink into Lily, and by the end of the movie, Nina has some black, and it is more black and grey ñ she almost loses the pink ñ and Lily is in some white with grey, she didn’t lighten. Slowly, as Nina’s character unravels, her colours become darker.
When I went to see classes I observed dancers would sneak up some crazy knitwear over the leotard, like the sweater instead they would wear it like a skirt they completely reinvent pieces that they put on top of their leotard. In our case we used layering to give more interest to the practice outfits but of course there were constraints in the colour palette and this process had to be very well timed so you are not putting the wrong layer, because we are dealing with so many and youíd go ìIíve used the pink legwarmers and then it is too late for the pink!
Dan: It looks like all that requires a keen eye for detail!
Amy: Yes, I had a great team: the people on set and my wardrobe supervisor who was making sure of continuity. It is a hard job because if they take off one piece in a dancing scene and then they take off another piece, you have to make sure that it happens exactly where it is supposed to happen by the time you need to get a different angle, or a wide-shot. There was a lot to remember.
Dan: Are you going to watch ballet more often now?
Amy: Absolutely, I got such a newfound love for it, it is just so beautiful and I have so much respect for it; like the ballerina that plays the black swan Pas de Deux, the fouettes I wanted to clap each and every time she did it because it was so beautiful and it is so much harder than we give it credit for. We don’t get our heads around how hard it is.
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