A con­ver­sa­tion with Mile­na Canonero, Wes Anderson’s cos­tume designer

Imag­ine your first cred­it as a cos­tume design­er for cin­e­ma was Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange. And now imag­ine that you include Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and Wes Ander­son as the names on your cur­rent client list. The Turin-born Mile­na Canonero is a leg­end in the indus­try, and has won four Oscars for her work over the decades, includ­ing most recent­ly one for the cos­tumes she designed for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Her work in Aster­oid City cov­ers duelling time­lines and dis­parate styles: a mid-cen­tu­ry desert-bound jaunt with an explo­sion of pas­tels, and the for­mal mono­chrome threads of a dis­pos­sessed clique of urban the­atre actors. We had a short, sharp chat with Canonero about her con­nec­tions to Kubrick, Anderson’s speci­fici­ty of vision and his own unique sar­to­r­i­al style.

LWLies: Hav­ing worked with Stan­ley Kubrick, was it strange to have to cre­ate cos­tumes for a char­ac­ter who was inspired by Stan­ley Kubrick?

Canonero: No it was not strange. It was I would say it was more mov­ing, as Stan­ley was such a great men­tor for me. It was one spe­cif­ic Stan­ley Kubrick look that inspired the char­ac­ter played by Jason Schwartz­man – when Stan­ley was start­ing his career as a young pho­tog­ra­ph­er. By look­ing into that peri­od of his life and also lis­ten­ing to Jason imi­tat­ing Stanley’s voice, it was touch­ing for me.

Did Wes and Jason tap you for infor­ma­tion in the cre­ation of the char­ac­ter of Augie Steenbeck?

There are so many pho­tos and so much infor­ma­tion for any­one to search. I some­times showed Jason some of Stanley’s ges­tures or man­ner­isms but in the end Augie is Augie cre­at­ed by Jason and Wes. Not a mim­ic ver­sion of Stan­ley even if the main inspi­ra­tion was Stanley.

Does Wes tend to want to see lots of options before land­ing on a ​“Look” for each char­ac­ter? How many dif­fer­ent cos­tumes for each char­ac­ter did you have to source?

No nev­er too many options. He is quite spe­cif­ic but he likes ideas, research and sug­ges­tions with­in the descrip­tions he gives me.

For Aster­oid City, how much fideli­ty did you retain to the time peri­od? Were anachro­nisms allowed?

Fideli­ty is inter­est­ing because often it is unusu­al and unex­pect­ed and there are so many choic­es in every peri­od. Anachro­nism is def­i­nite­ly allowed in Wes’s movies.

How much does Wes’s own sar­to­r­i­al tastes influ­ence his deci­sions for costumes?

Wes def­i­nite­ly has his own per­son­al style, his deci­sions for cos­tumes on his movies are not influ­enced by that nec­es­sar­i­ly. How­ev­er he loves cer­tain quirk­i­ness­es in cos­tumes that by now are famil­iar to me.