Costume Design by Deborah Nadoolman Landis

Jenny Beavan: "My process begins with breaking down the script on sheets of paper. Then I go through the script until I know it by heart and have lived and breathed each of the characters. The film I am designing now is contemporary with a crowd scene at the Savoy Hotel, so I hang around the Savoy and watch who goes in and out of the lobby. I am a people watcher. For Alexander (2004), I looked at vases in the British Museum; for Sherlock Holmes (2009), it was a mixture of old photographs and artists like Leslie Ward and Gustave Doré."

Leslie Ward (1851-1922) was a British portrait and caricaturist. Some of his work is below and you can see the influence that it has lent to Sherlock Holmes (1887):

  

As for French artist, illustrator, sculptor and printmaker, Gustave Doré (seen below), his "seamy, slimy side of London... etchings also seemed appropriate for [Sherlock Holmes]."

   

Beavan puts "together a notebook to remind [herself] of the different clothes that might be suitable for each character."She states "costumes should support the actor's performance. Costume design has far more to do with storytelling than to do with clothes."

Yvonne Blake: "if it's a period film, I may be inspired by paintings; for The Three Musketeers (1973) it was the paintings of Van Dyke and Rubens."

Self portrait of Van Dyke above, and of Rubens, below.

"Whether the film is contemporary or a period piece, as a designer I show the fashion of the time in which the film is set. Fashion is what people wear in any given time. The design reveals the social standing of the person I'm dressing; this is a statement of that time and in sociological terms. I think it's very important that costumes look like they're lived in, they mustn't look like they're fancy dress costumes."

Mark Bridges: "with a contemporary screenplay, I try to figure out who the characters are and what style of garments they would wear, where they would shop, how they feel about themselves. Their shoes, the way they wear their pants, will speak volumes to the audience." "If I'm designing a look that's