Milena Canonero, the legendary Italian costume designer known for her collaborations with the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola, Warren Beatty and others, made a rare public speaking appearance in Switzerland, in which she provided insight into her career.
During a talk at the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, where she received this year’s Vision Award on Sunday evening, Canonero recalled her first meeting with Anderson at the Chateau Marmont to discuss The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. “He was really friendly and open-minded,” she said. “Of course, I was familiar with his movies, including the very early ones. So I was very happy to get to know him.”
Different directors have different focus areas, of course. “Wes is very much involved with the look of his characters,” the costume design legend highlighted. “Objects, decorations, and all these things are very important to him.”
While Kubrick “doesn’t tell you much” until late in the process, “with Wes, it’s a sort of a symbiosis,” Canonero said.
About The Grand Budapest Hotel, she recalled that, “I didn’t want to design the usual green or brown or black uniforms, even off-white. It was just by chance that I noticed … this amazing purple color.” She added: “When I met Wes at his countryside home in the U.K., I said … look at this, and he jumped on the chair and said ‘This is it’.”
About the look she developed for Tilda Swinton’s Madame D character, Canonero said: “The film is set in the ‘20s, ‘30s. So I thought about [Gustav] Klimt.”
About her education, Canonero said: “I never went to any costume design school,” but attended special night classes in the U.K. “I learned everything in the U.K. I owe everything to the U.K.”
She added: “I never completed my studies in any country of the world, and I keep studying.”
The costume designer then discussed her long-running creative partnership with Francis Ford Coppola, including on Megalopolis, which he self-funded. The director wanted to “focus on the architect Cesar Catilina [played by Adam Driver] rather than Cicero [Giancarlo Esposito] who represents the establishment,” she said. “Francis made it very clear that they are two opposites.”
Given the story’s references to antique Rome, l the costumes she presented to the director included historic references.
Canonero explained the movie, which has divided opinions, this way: “It is a fable about a great country, like America, that is in the middle of chaos … and that is crashing.”
Canonero also discussed working with Sofia Coppola on Marie Antoinette, emphasizing that “the evolution of Marie Antoinette was Sofia’s interest.”
That in turn had an impact on the costume choices. “It’s a completely different 18th century compared to [Kubrick’s] Barry Lyndon’s,” she said. That meant “a lot of creative freedom where you mix up the present and the past with a pop attitude.”
Canonero also traveled to the Swiss fest to introduce a screening of Megalopolis.
She has won four Academy Awards for best costume design, namely for Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire (1981), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, along with three BAFTAs, three Costume Designers Guild Awards, the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, and various other honors.
“Since making her debut as a costume designer on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Milena Canonero has produced some of the most visionary costumes in film history and has shaped our collective imagination through the clothes we see on screen, using colorful fabrics and innovative cuts to draw out the essential natures of some of the most recognizable cinematic creations,” Locarno organizers said when they unveiled her as this year’s honoree.
“Like a Renaissance artist, she has combined the profound wisdom of craftsmanship with the potential of cinema, thus opening infinite spaces for human imagination and expression,” Locarno’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said at the time. “The work of Milena Canonero, beginning with the costumes she designed for A Clockwork Orange, has forever changed the perception of the expressive possibilities of costume design and even beyond, reshaping our thinking about cinema in general.”
The Locarno festival runs through Aug. 16.