Photo: Touchstone Pictures
Some outfits stick with us long after the closing credits. In a new
recurring series, Why That Outfit, ELLE.com explores the psychological
underpinnings (and on-set backstories) behind some of film and television's most
inexplicably iconic looks.
Whether she was snipping off the tip of the right index finger on her baby
pink cashmere gloves or smoking cigarettes on top of the toilet clad in nothing
but a flesh-colored negligée, there was something so aspirationally unhinged
about Margot Tenenbaum. And her clothes, which were anachronistic, moneyed, and
age-agnostic, were so spot-on that it’s no wonder that 12 years after the
release of the Wes Anderson classic, droves of grown women shrug on their
grandma’s mink and line their eyes with kohl each Halloween. Here, we chat with
costume designer Karen Patch (who also worked with Anderson on
Bottle
Rocket and
Rushmore) about how she went about dressing one of the
most complicatedly messy women in cinema history.
Photo: James Hamilton/The Kobal Collection/Touchstone
Pictures
"You don't even know how many selfies I get on Halloween of various people
dressed up like Richie and Margot. Some look great; some are not so good. But I
always say it's great. Since
The Royal Tenenbaums, I've had other
directors say to me, 'I want this to be something that will be worn on
Halloween.'
Margot Helen Tenenbaum is the adopted, chain-smoking, literary genius
daughter, who also won a Braverman grant at age 11. She is missing a finger and
wears a wooden prosthetic. She has a distant, unavailable father who introduces
her as "my adopted daughter." She has relationships with her adopted brother
Richie, a family friend, Eli, and of course her husband, Raleigh. I had a lot to
work with! When you know the history of the character, it forms an image in your
mind right away. Wes Anderson said that he wanted as much as possible to be
designed and built exclusively for the movie. He actually said, 'Don't shop
anything—make everything.'
Photo: Buena Vista Pictures/courtesy Everet /Everett
Collection
That's an important directive because handmade pieces look different—you know
you won’t be able to find those things on the rack somewhere. That's something
we tried to do in the first two films, we did together
Bottle Rocket and
Rushmore, but we had such small budgets that I could only make specific
pieces. Like for
Rushmore, I did the green velvet suit, and I did his
blazer, which had to be very specific. But we had a bigger budget for
Tenenbaums and a little more time. The other part of it was that we
agreed that Wes would stay available to me, because I didn't have enough time or
money to make any mistakes. Several nights a week, he would come down to my
office and we would go over everything while we were in prep.
The idea of Margot came together because I had seen an old Peter Sellers'
film, called
The World of Henry Orient, in which the young girl wears a
mink coat to run around New York.
Photo: Touchstone Pictures
I wanted to put Margot in the same look when she was a child, and have her
carry that through into adult life. She kind of knows who she is at a pretty
young age. So then Wes and I talked about a sort of trench style. He drew a
little line drawing, translated his notes into Italian, and I sent the sketch to
Fendi. I asked them if they would build this coat for me and they did! We had it
on loan for six months, and they made one for the little Margot, too. I wanted a
certain lapel and I wanted it to have a tie-waist. There were other specifics,
too. They sent me pelts and I went through all the caramel colors. It was the
same thing with her dresses. People think Lacoste made Margot's dresses, but
Lacoste didn't make striped dresses in that style at the time—they only made
solids. So I asked them if they would just send me fabrics so that I could pick
out the stripes I wanted to make the dresses with. But I had to get their
approval because Wes really wanted to use the Lacoste alligator logo.
Margot's look was contradictory, which definitely made it more interesting.
She was dressed in conservative pieces, but she was rebellious as a person: she
never smiled; she wore heavy makeup; she chain-smoked; she was sexually
promiscuous. . I think those contradictions—the fact that she was wearing what
looked like her mother's clothes, or something kind of country-club
conservative—made her edgy. I like to put unlikely things together—it certainly
makes things more interesting.
Photo: Touchstone Pictures
She also wore Bass loafers, which were very typical of that time and the
country club kind of look. The Hermes bag could have been her mother's so I
thought that was fitting. Plus, I couldn't find anything I liked better. Who
could, right?
I think Gwyneth, like everyone else at the fittings, was a little perplexed.
'Why is this so small for me?' 'Why are my sleeves too short?' Everything was
cut a little small for that time. But when Gwyneth put on the loafers she said,
'Now I know who I am.’"
