By Francesca Claybrook
Controversy is brewing over the actual designers of the costumes in Black Swan. The fashion world went crazy when it was announced that Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind Rodarte, would be designing some costumes for the film, and the Mulleavy sisters were not shy about speaking about their role in the whole process. The only problem? It seems they exaggerated just what that role was.
In an explosive new interview, the film’s official costume designer, Amy Wescott, contends that while Rodarte did collaborate with her on several looks, the bulk of the work was done by Wescott and others. When asked to elaborate on the work the Mulleavy sisters did do, she replied “[t]he white and black swan were a collaboration between Rodarte, myself, and Darren, a fact that is completely concealed in the press. In all, there were 7 costumes in the collaboration with Rodarte, not the ‘40’ that keeps coming up in the press. The core ballet was designed by Zack Brown (for American Ballet Theater), and my department and I added some feather detailing to assimilate them with the White Swan.”
What really comes across in the interview is the amount of work Wescott did making the costumes in the film accurate – she describes the hours she spent with the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre, observing the dancers both in their street clothes and their dance clothes in order to give the character of Nina the most accurate wardrobe possible. Wescott further added that in the future, she would certainly be wary of collaborating with fashion designers in the future – so although designers are creating budget-friendly collections for stores like H&M, it seems less likely that we’ll be seeing any more big-name designers working on films in the future.
Read the entire interview – it’s really fascinating – at Clothes On Film.