Original subtitles

WEST: I tried to put as many buttons on costumes as I could.

Or select things with a lot of buttons, design things with a lot of buttons...

...just to do that subliminal Benjamin Button theme through the movie.

THOMAS: Button's Buttons. There isn't a button that we don't make.

Our biggest competition is B.F. Goodrich and his infernal zippers.

I always start by reading the script...

...about four or five times before I even begin...

...uh, just to really feel the period and to feel the words.

Then I start trying to know the characters.

I mean, really know them from the inside out.

I re-read a lot of Fitzgerald just for the mood...

...and the feeling of the '20s when he wrote these, the jazz age.

Started from there and then went forward and backwards.

Watched a lot of old films...

...and looked at millions of photographs, I bet.

And then began to look for Benjamin Button.

I tried to keep the clothes rather simple and classic...

...to give kind of an everyman feeling.

I looked at a lot of Walker Evans, and Disfarmer and Lewis Hines...

...you know, the usual suspects. But I also looked at family photographs.

Because there's something when you look--

I know when I look at my family albums from past generations...

...there's a simplicity that was American.

A wonderful American taste through the ages...

...that's so different than Europe.

And the South had a different taste, a different look to it.

Some of Brad's wardrobe I made and some I found.

Old pieces that were genuines, that he loved.

And he loves whenever he can wear genuines.

Brad's tugboat ouftit in Russia...

...when he gets into the elevator with Tilda Swinton...

...is one of my favorites.

Tilda, I think her look in that elevator--

I actually ransacked a lot of British Vogues from back then.

And I wanted to keep her elegant and sexual...

...without making her too sexy, more repressed.

British women...

...theirs was a real different look during World War II.

And there was a real austerity in their dress, but an elegance.

It was the suit era, when women were often taking men's places in the world...

...and suits reigned.

But the tweediness of an elegant British woman's suit...

...was quite different than an American woman's suit.

FINCHER: Let's see you in. Let's see. No.

Tape it to the hat.

WEST: David really looks at every detail of every costume...

...before it goes on camera.

He has a real sense of beauty and wonderful taste.

-And then maybe a scarf over top of it. WEST: Over the top?

I always felt like I was dressing people for Lautrec...

...or for Caillebotte.

Wonderful Impressionist painters.

When you compare photorealistic versus Impressionist painting...

...you often get a much stronger reaction emotionally...

...a gut reaction from an impressionistic painting.

At least I do. And I feel David's able to do that.

It's a feeling and a mood.

And in a movie covering a hundred years...

...you have to impressionistically make people feel...

...and taste and hear that decade.

DAlSY: Is somebody looking for me?

WEST: And then when you have actors like Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett--

It was exciting working with both of them. They approach clothes in a different way...

...but they do know wardrobe.

They're so collaborative. They love trying different things.

They love suggestion, they love back-stories...

...and to hear why you made that choice.

But they know if something's right or not for that moment in time...

...in that character's life.

They get very in character during a fitting.

We'd try on different things for a different scene in the movie.

And you could tell by how their body language changed...

...how their posture changed and the expression on their face...

...and how they'd look at themselves in the mirror if you were right.

Certain costumes would evolve.

You know, Brad will change his mind right before he goes on camera.

Maybe grab something we were gonna use for another scene...

...because he'll feel something about that.

I remember once, he put on an overcoat...

...because he felt it obscured his body in such a way that he felt old.

You know, he felt the roundedness of an older man in that coat.

Cate Blanchett wears a dress in the gazebo scene in this...

...that I agonized over.

But I could always see--

The dress is based on an old Claire McCardell...

...that I think I had seen or maybe my mother had.

Or something I remember. A drawing.

And then it had to do a lot of things for that gazebo dance scene...

...and I modified it.

I think I was channeling Claire McCardell at that point.

Her designs were so evocative of ballerina clothes of that period.

David doesn't normally like red.

And I said, you know, "I'm happy to change the color."

Once he saw it on Cate, he said, "Let's leave it. Keep it red."

In the darkness and the fog of that gazebo, it was quite perfect.

The ensemble she wears when she's hit by the car in Paris--

David had a crane--

He was doing a crane shot of her twirling in that yellow coat.

And that coat is the only coat that would have made a full circle in that turn.

And it was a choice not based on that...

...but just based on what I think...

...somebody at her level in the world of ballet might have worn.

An incredible, you know, à la Givenchy creation.

There were 5000 costumes approximately, as close as I can figure.

Brad's character had around 200...

...and Cate's character, I think, 125.

There were 105 speaking roles, all with maybe an average of five changes.

And then 3500 to 4000 background.

We made the whole World War I Army for that scene...

...because they going to be blown up, and so much was gonna happen to them.

We did it over such a long period of time, and I had a fabulous crew.

Both my Los Angeles-based crew and my New Orleans crew were--

It was a dream crew...

...so I had a lot of backup and a lot of help and a lot of talent behind me.