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| Catherine George onstage in Thessaloniki Photo: Courtesy of Thessaloniki Film Festival |
As this year’s awards season kicks fully into gear, it’s a good time to remember all the craftspeople whose work on everything from make-up to production design hugely contributes to the success of films, even if it often does so without drawing attention to itself. In the world of costume, Belfast-born Catherine George has had a stand-out year, providing outfits for Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, Pattinson again in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 and the ensemble cast of Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother.
At Thessaloniki Film Festival this autumn, George sat down for a masterclass on her work.
Recalling her childhood, she said she was a punk “back in the day” which led to her customising clothes from vintage items she bought. She added: “I watched black-and-white films with my aunt, who was my babysitter on Saturdays, which sparked my love for cinema.“
She says that gave her an early interest in wanting to merge the two things together. When she started out in the industry, it was on the fashion side, working for eight years inLondon before moving to the US because her brother was living there.
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| Adam Sandler in Spaceman. Catherine George: "He was cursing me" Photo: Netflix |
She recalled: “I got a visa in a lottery programme. I decided to move to New York, it was the late 90s. I began working on low budget films as a freelancer, while waitressing to save money.”
She said she started of carrying clothes and looking at actors’ wardrobes, adding: “I got into the union and started working with a wardrobe on set and which is adjusting, it's a different job to designing and it's keeping continuity. From there I became an assistant.”
To start with, George says she was somewhat scared of using colours because she didn’t want them to jump out but that now she has “to embrace it”.
She added that certain projects require very particular colours, citing Jarmusch’s film. She said the same applied with Ramsay’s Die My Love, adding: “We shot it on Ektachrome, which is a really beautiful sort of Technicolour treatment and myself and the production designer and the DP worked together to try to get the most out of that format.”
He attention to detail is clear when she talks about one of her early films, Oren Moverman’s The Messenger, saying they got a military adviser in to help Ben Foster get the look of his beret correct.
In Father Mother Sister Brother the colour red is key, with George noting that it helps to “create kinship. The design for Jarmusch’s film involved collaboration with a fashion house.
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| Tilda Swinton as Minister Mason in Snowpiercer with her fake medals, which Catherine George says were inspired by Gaddafi |
“We were in New York and they were in Paris, so picking out the colours took us nearly a whole day. It was worth it because when they came out, they were incredibly beautiful, seeing as they have access to the best materials. When we began making the clothes, the production quality was truly remarkable.”
Much of George’s design stems from research she does in libraries or from old films and other sources. She said: “I also have a Dropbox now, because over the years, I keep folders of all the images and the research so that I can sort of dig back in. It’s very messy and I would love for someone to organise that for me!”
Speaking about regular collaborations with directors like Ramsay and Jarmusch, she said: “They are much like life itself. Connections are made between people, and this is one of the reasons why I love this job.”
Speaking about Ramsay, she said: “She loves clothes,” adding, with a laugh, “Sometimes the close disappear and I find them in her wardrobe.” But she also notes that as a director, the Scot is “super-collaborative”.
She also talked about working on Snowpiercer, which was a challenge because there were people from all over the world but that the characters had limited resources on the train that is perpetually circling a ravaged Earth. She said that’s why she wanted to use a Celtic football scarf “as a nod” to the fact that a character was Scottish, for example.
She said Tilda Swinton’s fittings “can take a whole day” because they are friends. She added: “On Snowpiercer, we flew to her house in Scotland and we basically played dress-up. Director Bong was also there.”
George adds that Swinton put on a ‘fake uniform’ that her character had made, complete with fake ribbons noting, “I had a reference picture of Gaddafi. And he is flying to Italy and he had made himself this giant medal. That was the inspiration for Mason and her medals.”
In the case of Mickey 17, in which “expendable” Pattinson pulls double duty as his character and a clone, George says she researched a whole range of multinational space suits until she found the one that she wanted to use. That was something she had also done when she worked with Adam Sandler on his space-set film Spaceman.
They settled on a Soviet-era style for him that he needed to climb in the back of “almost like a fridge door”. She added: “Adam was on a harness, so he was cursing me for coming up with this idea but it’s a very cool looking space suit.”
The Masterclass featured plenty of audience questions, including one about her future projects. Speaking about Ebeneezer: A Christmas Carol, directed by Ti West, she said: “The director is known for horror. So it was a dark retelling of the Christmas Carol and Johnny Depp is playing Scrooge.”
She added: “The research is amazing. It’s incredible to look at paintings and illustrations and actual garments and look at all the different retelings of A Christmas Carol and how other people have looked at it. I guess our favourite version is the period version with Alistair Sim. We also looked at a lot of German Expressionism and that mood is leaking into our aesthetic."
