{"id":506,"date":"2021-07-22T15:31:17","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T15:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tyrannyofstyle.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2021-07-22T15:31:17","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T15:31:17","slug":"jacqueline-durrans-costume-design-for-macbeth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tyrannyofstyle.com\/jacqueline-durrans-costume-design-for-macbeth\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacqueline Durran’s Costume Design for Macbeth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacqueline Durran<\/strong><\/b>\u00a0is an\u00a0Academy Award-winning costume designer<\/strong><\/b>\u00a0with such credits as\u00a0Anna Karenina, Pride & Prejudice<\/em><\/i>, and\u00a0Atonement<\/em><\/i>. Her latest project,\u00a0Macbeth<\/em><\/i><\/strong><\/b>\u00a0with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, is already receiving major acclaim, having premiered throughout Europe earlier this Fall. In time for the American opening this week, we asked Durran to talk us through her inspiration and process of designing the richly detailed costumes for this powerful tragedy.<\/p>\n

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Tyranny Of Style: Can you start by telling us about your initial inspiration for\u00a0Macbeth<\/em><\/i>?<\/p>\n

Jacqueline Durran: \u201cThere were a couple of starting ideas for\u00a0Macbeth<\/em><\/i>. The director thought of it in terms of a Western and I thought of it as an outlying land in the eleventh century. The two ideas aren’t at odds with each other, so my aim was to find a way of representing the two themes. I felt that to a large extent the 11th Century was an imaginary place as what survives as reference is very stylized. Taking the idea that it was a place on the edge of the known world, I looked for the simplest archetypal forms of clothing and sought a way to represent the rules of that frontier society in a very basic way. I used the bible of ancient clothing styles, namely\u00a0Tilke<\/a>, which reveals the similarity of basic shapes of ancient clothing around the world and cherry picked different styles to create our world. The palette of the film moved very simply from shades of grey and black at the beginning to shades of white for Dunsinane. The fact that each character had almost no changes of clothes was something that I think fits into the idea of a Western – people without a wardrobe of clothing choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Example of Costume and Pattern research images created by Max Tilke.<\/p>\n

T\/S: The witches are such a pivotal element of staged productions of\u00a0Macbeth<\/em><\/i>. Can you talk to us about their role in this filmed production and your inspiration behind their design?<\/p>\n

JD: \u201cThe inspiration for the witches costumes came from the idea that they were a nomadic group that came from the north – i.e. even more northern European than Scotland. An ancient race that fitted that description was the Sami people of northern Scandinavia and we looked at their traditional costume for inspiration. There was a note from Justin the director that the costumes should have a lot of bells incorporated into them, as he wanted to use the noise of the bells thematically for the witches. We started off with many bells but cut down the number in the course of the fittings – although we still spent a lot of time ensuring that they were all deadened for the sound department.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Macbeth<\/em><\/i>\u00a0– Costume design by Jacqueline Durran.<\/p>\n