Designer Kate Hawley Talks The Menacing Beauty of Crimson Peak's Victorian Costumes
Entertainment
Guillermo del Toro is known primarily as an auteur of highly stylized horror and science fiction, but with Crimson Peak, the director has made a film that has captured the imagination of the fashion world. On Tuesday evening, Bergdorf Goodman unveiled a new series of windows inspired by the film, interpreting its elaborate painstaking Victorian dresses with modern high-fashion versions set against backdrops alluding to its plot.
Fashion’s enchantment is fueled by del Toro’s all-encompassing vision for the film, a Victorian-era gothic set in which tells the story of Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring novelist who is inspired by her secret ability to see ghosts. Raised by her wealthy father in Buffalo, New York, she’s becoming restless by the expectations put upon her as a woman when in sweeps Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddletson), the dashing baronet of Allerdale, England, along with his cultured older sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain, at her compelling best). He’s seeking money for a contraption he’s invented to mine the crimson clay flowing beneath his estate, the perfect element to make sturdy bricks; but as he dazzles Edith and they seem to fall in love, it becomes apparent that there’s much more to Sharpe’s story than he’s letting on.
Set in Buffalo and Allerdale, the breathtaking completism of Crimson Peak’s visuals almost render the plot moot. Though it’s very good—true as it is to the tone of the historical gothic—and the acting is largely excellent, it’s the visual language that takes precedence in the tale, the palpability of the mood as set by misty nights, vaporous spirits, and creaky old manors. The sets are, largely, inside two cavernous mansions; one, in Buffalo, is cozy and glowing with the burnt orange of warmth, of home. The other, in Allerdale, is a stone-cold cavern, with a gaping hole in the roof allowing autumn leaves to flutter in and, later, icy snow to gather on the crumbling marble tiles.
Fleshing out these intense locales, of course: the costumes, voluminous and luscious with fabric, delicate folds hand-sewn into shirring and intricate details taking the mood into an immersive, fantastical ether. On one gown, worn by Lucille as she plays the piano at a ball, laces with metal darts dangle from her wrists, almost metronomic while her hands whisk across the keys. And Edith’s collection of nightgowns, so wispy and theatrical against her long, wavy hair, seem like the types of pajamas an angel would wear—or, even, a ghost.
Tuesday, on the highest floor of Bergdorf’s at an after-hours dedication ceremony for the windows, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston and Mia Wasikowska feted the vast accomplishments of del Toro and Kate Hawley, the woman responsible for the film’s elaborate costuming, who has also worked on films like Pacific Rim, The Hobbit and Suicide Squad.
Several floors above the spooky, perfectly Halloween-timed Crimson Peak windows at Bergdorf, in a room lit by candlelight and scented with human-sized arrangements of hundreds of fresh red roses, Jezebel sat down with Hawley among some of her costumes and discussed her painstaking, brilliant approach to her craft.
Jezebel: What was your approach and philosophy to the project?
Kate Hawley: Well, I know the devil that’s Guillermo, and I say that with the utmost love and affection, so I know when he says, “It’s just Victorian,” it’s never just that—it’s a starting point. I start off by drawing the character in the moment, and that’s how I talk with Guillermo—how do I see Edith in that chair in the corridor. I never do a costume drawing, it’s all about the character, but with Guillermo, I always sit down and read the script and you always see the motifs that he brings back.
I can’t say this strongly enough, that Crimson Peak felt like an opera, or a piece of music in that there’s almost two acts, you have the world of Buffalo and the world of Allerdale, and there are two seasons and colors and themes. So I read it and immerse myself in the real period detail, I do honor that. You have to know what you’re dealing with to know what you’re gonna trhow out. Then I went into looking at themes, like symbolist painters. There’s a an early draft of the film where they go to see some of the works of Rodin, the early symbolist painter, and that’s my world too. Guillermo and I have very similar books on our shelves. Sometimes I’ll go down little rabbit holes and borrow from very contemporary things, like in terms of color or, I found a photograph of a dead canary because I’d gone down into coal mines and all of it felt like it was answering many things at once.
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