Legendary costume designer Michael Kaplan talks about his career and his time so far in the Star Wars galaxy at the New York Times. Surely his work on the film will merit him an Oscar nod.
How do you dress a Jedi?
The old movies looked to Japan. The original costume designers looked at a lot of ninja clothes. They looked at westerns. And they looked at W.W. II and a little bit at W.W. I. I went to the same sources they did. I didn’t want to reinvent “Star Wars.” I wanted to embrace it and update it.
How many costumes did you design for “The Last Jedi”?
More than a thousand. And they’re all individually made, all in different fabrics. They needed dresses and gloves and jewelry. You can’t go out and buy clothes for “Star Wars.” We had a milliner. It was like M.G.M. in the ’30s. We had hats made, gloves made. We had people just making jewelry for this one sequence. The creatures would come to us naked, and we would dress them.
Were the creatures anatomically correct?
No comment.
