Quote

Clothing is the first step to building a character.

Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out.

What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he's become a different person.

I'm very much into the costuming of any character that I portray and it's one of the great things about making movies is it's a collaborative art form so you get all these artists who are looking specifically about for this instance your character's costume and what that might tell about your character.

Being a celebrity stylist, there are many tricks of the trade that I use in my house and with my clients.

In the beginning, when you're acting in amateur theater and off-Broadway, it was unheard of that anyone else would get your costume. And it was important to get a good costume. You put time into that.

I design for the movie and the character as well as the person wearing the costume. I show the ideas to the actor, then do fittings for shape and technical things such as movement in the costume. Once the costume in this form is on the actor, you have a sense of their connection with it. I then take it to the next level with the final fit.

In my early days in Hollywood I tried to be economical. I designed my own clothes, much to my mother's distress.

One thing about costume design - and I think design in general - but especially costume design, is people have a misconception that it's very glamorous work.