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The Who What Wear Podcast
Tracing the Rise of Bob Dylan Through Clothing in A Complete Unknown With Costume Designer Arianne Phillips
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- [00:02]
Hilary Kerr
Hi everyone, it's Hilary here. I'm just popping in to let you know that Marie Claire's podcast Nice Talk with Nikki Okanaki is back with its second season. If you don't already listen to Nice Talk, the show is a space where Marie Claire's incredible editor in chief, Nikki Okanaki sits down with influential women to discuss their relationships with money, power and style. Nikki spoke with the Internet's favorite astrologer, Chani Nicholas about the intersection of activism and astrology, Emmy Award winning writer Lena Waithe about the state of the entertainment industry and Bryn Whitfield about the dynamic of regret as a Bravo Liberty. Subscribe to Nice Talk with Nikki Okanaki and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the who what Where? Podcast, your direct line to the designers, stylists, beauty experts, editors and tastemakers who are shaping the ever evolving world of fashion. Hi everyone, it's Hilary Kerr who what Wears? Co founder and Chief Content Officer Today on the show who what Wears? Associate Director of Fashion News Aaron Fitzpatrick is chatting with Arianne Phillips, the costume designer of the new movie A Complete Unknown starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. Ariane is a Hollywood veteran and an award winning designer. She received her first Oscar nomination in 2005 for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and has since designed costumes for films like Don't Worry Darling and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, two of my favorites. Ariane has such a knack for recreating the look and feel of a specific decade and she brought that in spades to A Complete unknown, creating simple yet highly specific and authentic costumes. She joins Erin today to talk about her extensive research process for the film, collaborating with Timmy, as she calls him, and how she worked with Levi's to remanufacture Bob's exact skinny jean style. It's all coming up on who, What, Where.
- [02:37]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Thank you so much for speaking with me. I saw the movie and I loved it. I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. My first question is, why did you decide to take on this movie?
- [02:49]
Ariane Phillips
This is my sixth film that I've designed with our director Jim Mangold. Jim reached out to me actually in 2019 and said that he was going to make a movie about Bob Dylan, which kind of had me at hello, Bob Dylan being pretty much a soundtrack of my childhood and my adulthood of my life basically. And I was really intrigued and excited because Jim had recommended, before he sent the script that I read the book Going Electric by Elijah Wald. I know a little bit about the event at Newport, but not a lot, because there's a lot of mythology about it. I was really, really excited. And this is also a reunion for Jim and I, since we worked together on Walk the Line, which also was a movie about Johnny Cash. I learned about Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan's relationship in that movie. And I was really excited to be able to explore that and reunite with Jim.
- [03:50]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Can you talk about the evolution of Bob Dylan's outfits in the film and how they correspond to his rise in fame? So, for instance, I noticed his jeans got skinnier as he got more famous.
- [04:05]
Ariane Phillips
It's so interesting that you would mention his denim. Because when I first read the script, most biopics about known people are usually kind of the trajectory of their life from birth to death. And the thing that was so exciting about this story is that it's only four years. And in those four years we really see. This story, essentially, is about a young artist who's finding his voice at 19. He goes from 19 to 24. He's discovering who he is and what his musical direction is. And the thing that would help guide the audience through this arc of time from 1961 to 1965, would be the costumes and the hair. Because typically in a biopic, you see a lot of changes socially, politically. You see technology changing, you see architecture changing. And in this story, you really don't see any of that. But what you do is our actor changing from a teenager, if you will, to becoming the man and the artist that we've come to know. And that was such a great opportunity. And also a certain reverence. The costumes could help contribute to the journey that we bring the audience on from beginning to end. And with all the research I had aggregated over the previous four years, the thing that was really apparent and the kind of through line in terms of Bob's style and what he gravitated towards was denim. He's always worn denim and also boots. And of course, we see his silhouette changing with his hair. His hair is shorter in the beginning, and we know it to grow longer, which really affected his silhouette. And that is usually my entry point for design is silhouette and also color. So for me, when I was diving into the denim aspect, the early photos, the few that we found of him when he first came to New York, he was wearing these dungarees, these carpenter or painter pants in denim. You know, I mean, denim at that point, because of all the dress codes in 1960, one was really only for recreation or work. You would never be able to wear jeans. To school or to church. It's such a different world now that we live in, where denim is really part of our language. It really was apparent to me that this journey of denim would also underscore this story about freedom and self expression. Denim took on this kind of youth culture movement, especially in the 60s, that has influenced the way we dress today. So that was a really exciting story to tell. That was very organic to Bob. Early on in 2022, I had reached out to the archive in the vintage department at Levi's. They're one of the few heritage brands that still has the same integrity for over 100 years. So lucky for me, I was able to have them vet the denim that Bob was wearing. You know, this dungaree kind of painter pant when Bob Dylan is really embracing the way his hero dressed, who was Woody Guthrie at that time, that kind of proletariat work wear. And then as we travel through our story in the West Village, when he was just starting to get known, you see him on the Free Wheeling album cover with his girlfriend, Suze Ritello, who is Sylvie in our movie, played by Elle Fanning. You see he's wearing what I was pretty sure were Levi's, and I was right. An iteration of 501s that were popular at that time in 1963. And then the 1965 Bob, he's wearing these very skinny jeans. Lucky for me, a wonderful man in charge of the vintage department, Paul O'Neill, who works at Levi's in San Francisco, was able to identify them as the skin super slims, which they're really impossible to find. And so Levi's recreated those for us. That was part of my initial fittings with Timmy in 2023. Now, mind you, Jim asked me to design this film in 2019. We were meant to go in 2020. Of course, we were delayed by Covid and we had several delays after that. And that had afforded me four years of research, which is just unheard of. So I was able to kind of forensically break down the script and figure out this character arc not only for Timmy, but for Pete Seeger and even Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Sylvie L.L. fanning's character. Then we shut down two weeks before shooting for the actors strike. This was a huge gift for me because I had done about eight weeks of on the ground work with fittings, which is a relatively short physical prep. We were able to perfect the jeans with Levi's. We actually went back and had them remanufactured because the jeans that we had fit on Timmy for 1965 weren't quite fitting exactly as we had wanted. And we were going to kind of hunt and gather from vintage pieces because Timmy alone had 66, 67 costume changes. And all of my principal actors, they all had minimum of eight changes, maximum of, like, 25. So making sure that there's a balance in all the scenes so everyone's not wearing the same color or we're able to tell not only Bob's character arc, but all the other characters as well, was afforded that luxury, which, even though we're out of work, it was very fortuitous for me to be able to even have that last six months to meditate and marinate on the work we had done thus far. So it was really fortunate.
- [10:06]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah, love that. So the movie includes some very highly publicized real events, such as the day Bob Dylan played electric guitar for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival. Was it important for you to be historically accurate with this costume and other costumes? And did you take any little creative liberties?
- [10:28]
Ariane Phillips
Well, you know, the wonderful thing about James Mangold, our director, you know, my first film with him was Girl Interrupted. From that movie through Walk the Line to a western. We did 3:10 to Yuma, which is fictional, but based on a movie that was made in the 50s. Jim was very encouraging that it's important to not pay attention to other Westerns or even the original film, but to be, I think, fluent in terms of what people wore at that time. Jim is an ideal collaborator because he gives us permission, and I'm talking about the production designer and the cinematographer, to collectively all come together and create our own visual language that's right for the story we're telling. But with that said, of course, absolutely recreating those events, the real events in our story is very well documented, whether it's album covers, newsreels or photos, as well as all the books that I read, different biographies about Bob Dylan. I learned a lot through the people in his life who talked a lot about their impressions of Bob, their memories of Bob. All that was really, really important. You really need to have your foundation to be able to improvise. We had the same challenge on this film that we did on Walk the Line. On Walk the Line, we had public footage of Johnny and June and photos, but we didn't have private photos, and we didn't have private photos of Bob either. So really becoming fluent in not only who Bob is in our film, but where he goes after that, his aesthetic and what is true to him, whether it's the colors that he Had a tendency to go to or patterns or silhouettes. So, yes, the research is everything. And for me, the most fun part, I was able to amass quite a few documents that correlated to our script scenes. And that was a tool that I used to help inform visually our actors in the fittings. So I was able to share lengthy documents visually that showed the events that we were recreating and other images around the different time periods. Because we broke our film down into three sections. But we had such a ambitious shooting schedule. There were days when we were shooting all three time periods the same day, which was crazy because that meant hair changes and a lot of costume changes. So it was a very ambitious and rigorous shooting schedule and also really thrilling to that end.
- [13:18]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Can you speak more about what it was like to work with Timothy in those kind of challenging conditions?
- [13:25]
Ariane Phillips
Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, it's really unique being a costume designer. We are the only department that's like, hello, nice to meet you. Take your clothes off. It's a very intimate job. And we're often the first person that the actor meets before shooting. Of course, Timmy had been developing with Jim for five years. But that first day we meet, it's really about building trust. And I believe that my job is helping them visually with research. Like it helped Timmy visually in terms of. He had been really, really focused with Jim on the script and acting, of course, and music. And he learned multiple instruments. Piano, guitar, electric, acoustic and harmonica, let alone singing, and of course, acting. So he had his hands full for quite a while. And he was a wonderful scene partner for me just in terms of his enthusiasm, his sense of focus. We had to do many fittings. I probably did more fittings on this movie than I've ever done.
- [14:36]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Wow.
- [14:36]
Ariane Phillips
Because of the way that we were telling this story through time, working with Timmy was a dream. He's also incredibly open and curious, which is always my favorite qualities in an actor. And very, very collaborative. He was really, really up for everything. And patient. It takes a lot of patience to do fittings. We have to prick and prod and try things that maybe never work. We have to kind of turn over every stone to make sure we're making the right choices. And in the beginning, I put a lot of vintage pieces on him to figure out his silhouette because clothes look amazing on him. Like everything you put on him, you know, he just has a natural elegance to his physicality. And we really worked hard to try to disguise that in the beginning, where as a 19 year old, showing up in New York City looking For Woody Guthrie and being able to show that kind of silhouette change to 65, how his silhouette slims out a bit. So hopefully the audience isn't taken out by it, but it feels believable.
- [15:49]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Was there any specific outfit or item that Timothy had input on?
- [15:55]
Ariane Phillips
It's always a dialogue in the fittings about how something feels. And I really believe that costumes not only act for visual storytelling, of course, for the audience, but they're also a physical experience for the actors. And something that I take great pride in is creating a costume that helps the actor transport them to that character. So having that kind of dialogue and discussion in the fitting room is everything and crucial. And, you know, I'm always asking an actor, how does that feel? Like we all know the experience of walking out of the house in the wrong shoes or the pants that don't make you feel right. But in this case, with actors who are singing and playing instruments, giving them an ease so they don't have to think about it, so that the costume can become a second skin, basically.
- [16:50]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Right. So I'd love to talk about Bob Dylan's sunglasses. They are so symbolic in the film because they're introduced right as he's on the cusp of real fame. And it seems to me that he used them as a way to hide from the newfound attention that kind of made him uncomfortable. Can you elaborate on the importance of the sunglasses and what they represent?
- [17:16]
Ariane Phillips
You know, the truth is, Bob wore sunglasses throughout his life. Some of the mythology around him is he is a shy guy. It's true that he started wearing sunglasses publicly, although we don't have a lot of early photos of him. But he wore a lot of aviators in the mid part of our story. You know, he's a motorcycle enthusiast. He famously has always been riding motorcycles. And, you know, I would imagine that that comes hand in hand with that. And then the sunglasses also provide a veneer and a separation from the bright lights and the fandom that he was largely uncomfortable with. And the sunglasses, they're Bosch and Loam, which is a very early iter of Ray Ban. There's a wonderful business here in Los Angeles that supplies vintage glasses, optical and sunglasses. And I went to Sky Russell at Oldfocals, and immediately he knew exactly what sunglasses they were. And we just had to figure out what was right for Timmy's face. But, you know, when you think about Bob Dylan, he's really our American archetype for rock and roll. In the 60s, it was the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that we always talk about. As being these kind of rock and roll archite archetypes. But Bob Dylan was becoming known at the same time. And I really learned a lot about his style. In 65 when he went to London, he did a little tour in England and clearly came back with his Chelsea boots and his skinny jeans. His hair got longer, his sunglasses got more angular. And you can see, you know, he was a huge fan of the Beatles. And he was hanging out with them and Donovan. And you can see that kind of early mod style that he adopted in 1965. They are definitely part of that rock and roll archetype that is so iconic that Bob Dylan is known to create.
- [19:17]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah, definitely. I loved the quick scene where Bob Dylan goes shopping for his Newport Folk Festival outfit. Because it would be so unheard of today with musicians being so highly stylized and very image conscious. And everything is very planned out. So do you know if Bob really did shop for his own clothes?
- [19:39]
Ariane Phillips
Oh, yeah, he definitely did. And when he was in England, you know, we've seen pictures of him being measured. You can see in 65, he was wearing these tab collar shirts that were obviously made for him. I would imagine that Albert Grossman, his manager, who dressed very well and he wore three piece suits. You would imagine he would have had suits made on Savile Row. That particular shirt, the polka dot green shirt. We had seen black and white photos of that shirt that he wore at soundcheck at Newport. Jim, our director, wasn't so crazy about it. He thought it might take the audience out. So we weren't sure we were going to use it in the film. But definitely Al Cooper, played by Charlie Tehan in our movie, was wearing it at the evening performance. We didn't really know the color right away because it was on an obscure album cover. Didn't even look like truly a color photo. But it looked like an album cover that was colorized, that it was green. And I just remember being so surprised. It was such a mod kind of peasant, pirate shaped shirt with green polka dots. There is that funny scene where they're at the Viking Hotel and Bob says to Al, take that ridiculous shirt off. And then you see him put it on. When Pete comes to talk to him about what he's going to play that night, it just works so well. I'm so glad we used it.
- [21:05]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Can you speak to how the lack of professional stylists might have impacted fashion Trends in the 60s and in particular Bob's and Joan's style?
- [21:18]
Ariane Phillips
So I think it was really DIY in those days with Joan. I had a really fun journey with her, the way that I dressed her in the film. Since she lived in Carmel and she was West Coast, I wanted to keep her color palette kind of rich with darker hues. I found all these photos of Joan BAEZ At Newport, July 1965, hanging out barefoot, wearing her madras shorts and just a simple T shirt or a dress. And she's wearing this odd vinyl coat. And I couldn't understand that coat. It seems so uncharacteristic of how Joan dressed. And as I got into the research over time, I found that in June 1965, a month before she shot her album cover with Richard Avedon, Farewell, Angelina. And I was so excited by this photo because she's wearing that coat. Their hair's blowing. There's like, wind. It's a studio shot. Richard Avedon, one of our most famous portrait and fashion photographers, who was a Vogue photographer at the time, I was like, oh, maybe there was a fashion editor there and gave her that coat. And it became her favorite coat. I was digging a little bit deeper, and I came upon these photos of her in May 1965, a month before the album cover and two months before Newport, wearing that coat in London at an anti war demonstration in Trafalgar Square with Donovan. And I was very intrigued by that. And I thought, oh, I wonder if it's a Mary Quant coat. It's truly a mod coat. Because at that time, Carnaby street and mod fashion was just becoming vogue with Twiggy and Biba girls from previous projects. I know a couple of the curators at the Victoria Albert Museum in London. They had done a retrospective on Mary Quant, and they were able to vet that coat for me, which was thrilling. And it's that kind of geeky research that is finding gems like that. And I found it to be so important because it was representative of Joan's international fame and her influence of traveling, just like Bob. And when you look at how Bob's style was fast evolving post London and Jones style kind of sets them apart from all their friends in everyone stateside. So that was really important. And then, of course, in terms of my research of Bob in General, going past 1965, kind of seeing where Bob went in 66, he really goes out on a limb with his style. It really explodes. So in terms of, like, his patterns and these bespoke suits, and he becomes very mod in the end of the movie, we see him kind of foreshadow that the storytelling is really exciting to be able to kind of See those little style Easter eggs?
- [24:23]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Can you speak about the outfits where Timothy invites Elle Fanning into the photo shoot as they're sitting on the stoop? And was that recreating what would become the COVID of freewheeling Bob Dylan album?
- [24:39]
Ariane Phillips
You know, that is a montage, right, of them in the West Village. And there were a few photo shoots that she was a part of and some very tender pictures that really encapsulated the intimacy and the love that they shared. I mean, when they met, he was 19, 20, and she was 17, and she clearly was his first love. And being able to show that Susie Ruttello, who Sylvie's based on, was in quite a few photo shoots. So that was our homage to that. The coat that she's wearing with the fur around the collar, which is actually fake fur. Bob bought that coat for her, a vintage Romanian traditional coat. And she also bought a coat for him that he would wear on his second album cover, that he wore in the scene when he's singing Masters of War and then he ends up kissing Joan at Folk City. She famously bought that coat for him for a photo shoot with Shearlene. So for us to be able to learn about the way that Bob dressed through the storytelling of reading a lot of these books and people's impression of him was great to give us meaning behind what he's wearing and a bit of storytelling.
- [25:56]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
And so where did you source the traditional Romanian coat that Elle wears in the film?
- [26:02]
Ariane Phillips
Well, given that it's got the traditional embroidery, and I personally didn't want to use real fur, which Bob probably wouldn't have been able to afford at that time anyway. It took quite a while, actually, to source that coat. We got it from a vintage dealer. I actually think we got it on Etsy. His shearling coat that Suzuatello bought, Bob we recreated and we made. Most of Timmy's costumes were made. There are a few vintage pieces which are always important, I think, especially because you just can't recreate the hang and the feel of that fabric and sometimes the patterns. Although we do have technology now where we can digitally print patterns, we're able to do that with Joan's dress and a few things. Actually, Timmy's striped T shirt that he wears in the photo shoot scene at the apartment we recreated based on a famous photo shoot that he did in his own apartment. You think it'd be easy to find one of those vintage striped T shirts, but we actually ended up digitally printing fabric and remaking it. So that could be as close to the Real thing as possible.
- [27:07]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
I love that you found the jacket on Etsy. And I'd love to talk about Bob Dylan's leather jacket, the one he's wearing. Newport Folk Festival 1965. Do you think that was symbolic of him going electric and embracing that rock and roll element?
- [27:27]
Ariane Phillips
The truth is that Bob wore multiple suede jackets in 63 and 64. We created three different suede jackets. We had a chocolate brown one, we had a two pocket motorcycle one, and the one he wears on the freewheeling album cover. So they were all different shades of brown. Matter of fact, I am doing Levi's collab with a very small capsule collection. We recreated his two pocket brown motorcycle jacket that is a limited edition. I'm really excited about it. The black leather jacket that Bob Dylan wears at Newport is an exact recreation of the real leather jacket. We actually had pictures of the real thing that were photographed on their own. And then of course pictures of Bob. Although there's not a lot of pictures from that concert and hardly any footage. And most of them are black and white. But we knew it was a black leather blazer, three patch pockets. And if you really look at Bob's style evolution over the years, that black leather blazer that he famously wore at Newport 65 has been part of his silhouette to this day. You know, you can see it in the 70s, you can see it in the 80s and the 90s, different versions of a black leather blazer that is just kind of part of his iconic style. So clearly that was a special piece. It was so great to bring those pieces to life. And the orange tab shirt, the black super slim Levi's. And we recreated those Chelsea suede boots that he famously wore at Newport. And it's kind of a beam me up suit for Timmy in terms of that moment in time that we were recreating.
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Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Such a historic moment. Do you happen to know what the brand of Bob Dylan's original one was?
- [29:21]
Ariane Phillips
No. There's no branding on the photos that we saw. I would imagine that he had it made. It's not something that I think would have been widely available at that time. Time. Maybe he bought it in London, but I would think he had it made. All the suede jackets that he wore, some of them had bone buttons and a lot of leather craftsmanship. They definitely were handmade by someone for him. So perhaps that same person made one in black leather, which is such a departure from the kind of warmness of brown suede. And then you see that defiant use of color and the shininess of the leather as opposed to suede. Like, you see that. Working with where he was going with his music, where he was going. You know, I think Johnny Cash was such an important part of Bob's story. Because the thing about Bob that you learn from reading those letters is how much he got from Johnny Cash, confidence wise about being true to yourself as an artist. Don't let anyone box you in. I think Johnny Cash was such a huge support for him as an artist he admired who really recorded all kinds of music and wouldn't be defined by one genre. He was constantly doing as he wished and not bending to the record company or what people thought he should be. So he had that. And also Johnny had style too, and, you know, the man in Black. And so I think that relationship between the two of them artistically and in terms of Bob's Persona, I'm very happy that we're able to touch on that in our movie because I think that kind of mentorship and friendship amongst artists is essential. Bob was also reflective of the culture. You know, his early days with his protest songs. Susie, his girlfriend, she really encouraged him to do those early songs. And she was an activist. She was involved in the civil rights movement and Pete Seeger as well. So he really was influenced around the people in his life.
- [31:29]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And were you able to speak with Bob or Joan about the film?
- [31:33]
Ariane Phillips
I never spoke to Bob. Knowing that he's an executive producer in our film was enough for me. You know, Jim shared some of his conversations he had with Bob about the script, which was really helpful. I worked years ago with one of Bob's sons, Jesse Dillon, on a music video. So maybe a little adjacent to Bob, which is totally fine with me. Joan I never spoke to, but Monica Barbaro did. She was in touch with Joan and we talked a lot about her. She was writing with Joan back and forth. And Joan actually does these really cool drawings. And she sent Monica some notes about what she wore at the time. And I remember at one point, Joan was talking about these cufflinks that she bought Bob, and she was trying to describe those cufflinks. And then Monica in turn said, do you know, have you looked? Have you seen these cufflinks in research? So that was like, Joan adjacent as well.
- [32:27]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And to finish us off, I found an image in 2024 of Joan @ Newport Folk Festival. And she is still going barefoot to this day. So I loved that she was barefoot in the film.
- [32:41]
Ariane Phillips
Yeah. And that was something that Monica really embraced, which was great. It's very iconically, Joan thank you so much.
- [32:50]
Aaron Fitzpatrick
I really appreciate you taking the time and I'm excited to check out the Levi's collection and for everyone else to watch the movie.
- [32:58]
Ariane Phillips
Thank you so much, Aaron. I'm thrilled to be able to talk to you guys today.
- [33:07]
Hilary Kerr
A huge thank you to costume designer Ariane Phillips. Make sure to subscribe to our show wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss an episode. And while you're there there, I'd also be so grateful if you'd rate and review us. If you have any guest suggestions or any other feedback, drop us a line atpodcastwhowhatwhere.com or you can find us on social at whowhatwere. See you next Wednesday on the who what Where Podcast. This episode was produced by Hilary Kerr, Summer Hammeris and Natalie Thurman. Our production assistant is Claire Schmidt. Our editor is Co Takasugi Chernovin. Our audio engineers are at Glen Canyon Audio and our music is by Jonathan Leahy.
- [34:11]
Unknown
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