‘Dune’ Costume Designers Created ‘1,000 or So Looks’ for Denis Villeneuve to Use in Part One
Zack Sharf
“Dune” has started rolling out overseas, collecting a strong $36.8 million in its international debut over the weekend. While the first movie in Denis Villeneuve‘s planned two-part saga doesn’t arrive in the U.S. until late October, his crafts team has started making the rounds in support of what is surely one of the year’s big below-the-line Oscar contenders. Costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan recently spoke to Variety, which reports the duo created “1,000 or so looks” to bring the film’s different planetary worlds to life.
As reported by Variety: “Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan teamed up to create the 1,000 or so looks needed for the three main worlds of the movie: Arrakis, Caladan, and Giedi Prime. ‘For research, I looked at David Lean films — “Dr. Zhivago,” “Lawrence of Arabia” — [as well as] “Fahrenheit 451,”‘ says West. She says she also referenced Greek and Roman mythology because she thought there was a connection there with House Atreides and House Harkonnen…Other wide-ranging inspirations included art by Goya, Giotto and Caravaggio; the clothes of desert people such as Bedouins and Tuaregs; tarot cards; the classic fashion of Balenciaga; and the colors of the rocks and sand in Jordan, where a chunk of the action was filmed.”
The first costume West researched was the “stillsuits,” the body suits worn on the desert planet Arrakis to sustain life. The suits are described thoroughly in Frank Herbert’s “Dune” novel, and West consulted with “Black Panther” and “The Batman” concept artist Keith Christensen to get the look just right for Villeneuve.
“Each one had to be cut on a mold of the actors’ bodies, because the movement of the body is what theoretically activates the stillsuit and turns it into a distillery,” West said. “[Both in the book and film, the suits take human wastewater and turn it into a gas,] and then that filters through all of the tubing in the suit as a coolant with gauges and regulators. And we put all that on the stillsuits.”
“Dune” arrives in U.S. theaters on October 22, the same day it becomes available to stream on HBO Max for 31 days.
