Deconstructing Dystopia

Costume designer Natalie Bronfman shares behind the scenes details of working on The Handmaid’s Tale and See

From the terrifying world of The Handmaid’s Tale Gilead to the dystopian reality of See, the 2020 Emmy nominated costume designer Natalie Bronfman conjures up unforgettable characters in dire circumstances. In particular, it is the white bonnet contrasting the vivid red cape which continues to be instantly recognizable with its contemporary significance during the #MeToo movement and a challenging presidential and political period for the United States of America. Protestors around the world dressed in The Handmaid’s Tale-inspired garments and demanded women’s rights and freedoms.
‍

As the costume designer for The Handmaid’s Tale season three, Bronfman was in charge of creating memorable visuals while an uprising brewed in Gilead, marking the season as a true turning point for the Hulu show. On the AppleTV+ show See, Bronfman dives into a universe of characters grappling with the absence of sight due to a virus with creative inspiration and upcycling, first as the costume supervisor/assistant costume designer for S1 and S2 and then as costume designer in S3.

Natalie Bronfman’s original sketches of Edo’s armour for See. Image courtesy of Natalie Bronfman.

Maya Orbach: When did you first know you wanted to pursue costume design and whatinitially drew you to the profession?

Natalie Bronfman: Well, I’ve wanted to do this ever since I can remember. I didn’t want to be a vet, I didn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer. I wanted to do costumes. I did also want to be an opera singer but I wasn’t really that great. I was in the opera, and I loved it so much. I was trying to figure out a way to get out of the chorus and still stay in the environment. I already knew how to sew because I was taught as a very young child and I knew how to draw, so then I ended up thinking well, what can I do so I can do the both of them together? And it was costume design. And here I am, many years later. Another thing is unfortunately, in the theatre arts, opera and so on, the pay is so terrible that you end up having to slide into other things because you have to pay the rent.

MO: How challenging was it to continue the storyline in the third season of The Handmaid’s Tale from the work of Ane Crabtree?

Natalie Bronfman’s original design sketches for The Handmaid’s Tale. Image courtesy of Natalie Bronfman.

NB: It wasn’t difficult at all because I’ve been there from its inception. Because the parameters are so tight, the box is so small in terms of where you can go with the things, that sort of was all taken care of. I just had to continue that. Then, because we ended up in another city, Washington [D.C.], I was then able to go a little bit outside the box or into the same box, but a bigger box- put it that way; I could create. There were new factions of military and more piousness, so I could play around with that a bit. What I did mostly was play around with the tailoring, because really the only thing you have left, is tonality and shape in the end. Every new character they introduced would belong to one of the Econopeople, Aunts, Commander Wives, or the Handmaids, so it was pretty regimented in that sense. Just the quantities were huge. We went from 40 handmaids to 350 and two weeks later, a ball.

MO: How did you incorporate Serena Joy and June Osborne's personalities and intentions with their costumes on the show?

Natalie Bronfman’s original design sketch for Serena Joy of The Handmaid’s Tale. Image courtesy of Natalie Bronfman.

NB: Well, that started out with discussions, of course, of where they [the actresses] want to go with their story, because they had a bigger outline than I did. Typically, I get an outline of roughly where the story is going to go, but I don’t get details. Usually what I do is I’d meet the actors the first time, and then all we really do is talk and then get some measurements. Sometimes I have garments ready but usually not. I bring them back a few days later and we do a fitting of muslin (calico), and so on.

I sit down with them and I ask where do they want to go with their character this year? Are you becoming angry, are you becoming stronger? I can tell the arc very slowly of where we’re going to go with it, so you can see the anger growing or dissipating. I do that in all the shows with all the characters that I craft because it has to be part of their character. You shouldn’t look on the screen and say, oh look at that dress first. You should say, oh look at the character or feel the character. And the clothes obviously should complement it, not stick out.

MO: How collaborative was the process with the actors on creating the costumes they would wear to channel their character?

NB: Well, it’s a huge project in psychology. Some people are extroverts, of course, and some people are introverts. Some will tell you where they are planning on going often or they are very excited about telling you everything that they know before actually starting work. The hardest people to crack and understand what they are after or what they need from me in order to make their characters richer, are the people who keep it to themselves, who are working inwardly. I have to tailor my presentations and my fittings accordingly by certain conversations, questions to ask.

I have to think about the character and then ask them, well are you seeing it this way or this way? For example, I would like to do this character perhaps in blue tones and they’re like, oh I hate blue. Okay, well I didn’t know that, so we rejig the whole thing. So, it’s definitely a conversation. You also have to not only satisfy the actors’ character building, but you also have to satisfy production. The director and DOP might have a different vision maybe than them, they have to meet, hash it out. It’s all of that.

Natalie Bronfman’s original design sketch for Serena Joy of The Handmaid’s Tale. Image courtesy of Natalie Bronfman.

MO: Like The Handmaid’s Tale, See is also a dystopian show. What is it like creating costumes for individuals in altered, or imagined realities?

NB: It. Was. Phenomenal. It was so wildly creative; I don’t think I’ll ever get a project like that again. So, where Handmaid’s was such a tight box, the was no limit to the other. Except for the fact that nobody could see, in the story everybody was blind. So that meant I had to create costumes that either had a noise element to it, you could smell it or you could feel it. I had to use all the other senses to create the costumes. But I had to, for the audience, create something interesting to look at. There was no limit. I mean we used washers to create chainmail, we used radio diodes to make jewelry, we used vents that you have in the ceiling to make belts. It was just amazing. There were just no limits.

The only thing that was funny that I found, and I wasn’t the only one who was doing it, all the other heads, all production designers and props were doing it too- our natural psyche goes to symmetry, weirdly enough. Now if you’re blind and you’re building something, you know you’re always going to have the buttons off a little bit, so we’d be aware of that the first little while that we’re building, and then naturally fall back into symmetry. Everybody, all of us would always get a note that it’s too symmetrical. We naturally do that without even thinking about it. I had 57 people on my team. It was insanely big and all the artisans and shoemakers and milliners and crafters and leathermakers, everybody would slide back into the symmetry. So, it was interesting to watch as well, for me to make note of it.

MO: Which historical figures or periods did you refer to for See?

NB: Every one of them, pretty much. I’m a history nerd so there were no boundaries. It was great- I could go from ancient Greek and Roman times to… maybe not modern times, but I think I took it up to the 19th century. We did medieval Islamic society to ancient Chinese, to medieval Japanese society. I found out that our lead actor loved Japanese culture as much as I did, so it was a nice marriage of ideas. We created the samurai so that was fun, I’ve never done that before. I remember him standing on set saying, “six-year-old Jason [Momoa] is so happy right now!” because he always wanted to be a samurai. The first season it was these mountain people I want to say, and then we went into an urban society. It was funny because I didn’t even have a conversation with the production designer about this, but she also naturally went there. She also has a lot of history background; we sort of went into ancient Roman society in terms of structure and military. It was interesting to see because I sort of treated it as Rome itself from whatever, 100 AD.

The military was so strong and so I brought in a lot of elements from that, their uniforms, even ancient Roman things and then I mixed it with Japanese culture in terms of their plates. We had some sort of Iron Age and Age of Enlightenment things, so it was just a mashup. If you pull up a costume, I could probably tell you exactly where it’s from. The research was so much fun. I could pull from anywhere. And my favourite type of fashion is deconstructivism so I could mesh that all together. We made dresses out of bamboos shards for example. It was a little pointy, but it worked. So, we were playing around with all different types of ideas.

Natalie Bronfman’s original design sketches of Edo’s armour for See. Image courtesy of Natalie Bronfman.

MO: There’s an incredible number of hidden messages, different symbols and languages within the costumes. How did you decide which character would have those special details?

Natalie Bronfman’s original design sketches of Edo’s armour for See. Image courtesy of Natalie Bronfman.

NB: I would try to figure out who was the essence of this character, what was their essence basically. We had a faction called the Compass Girls, who took care of the sighted children, and they always found their way back, they always found their way home, they always kept everybody safe. I started to research, and I went into the Icelandic iconography to see if they had a symbol. Then I morphed that into something else. In the 1400s in Portugal, the sailors created this rose shape called the Compass Rose and they would tattoo it on their skin as a good luck charm so that they could always find their way home. That became the Compass Girls’, their symbol. I played around with runic symbols a little bit. Tamacti Jun, he was sort of based on Shaolin monks, so I took some of the symbolism of that. Inside his jacket, even though we couldn’t see it, we created a symbol for him that was in all his clothing. It was fun.

MO: What sort of departments comprise the See costume design team?

NB: We had milliners, we had armourers, we had leathercrafters, we had shoemakers. We built everything from scratch. We had a girl who just built exclusively crowns for the queen, out of silver forks and whatever we had. We had felters and knitters, people who would knit or wove felt. We had a dyer, we had breakdown artists. We had mould makers, because we had to churn out the armour so fast over 400 guys, which we poured from a mould.

The lead cast, however, received leather custom made armour pieces. Every costume, six or seven people would work on it. Not one person built one costume. After a while, I got to know the artisans so well that for example, this person is really good with embroidery, I would give them the embroidery portion and then I would take it and then give it to somebody else for the other portion of it. Knowing everyone’s strengths and weaknesses now and their speed, that was also very important. It was huge.

Natalie Bronfman’s original design sketches of Maldeogo and Vasiliot for See. Image courtesy of Natalie Bronfman.

MO: What would you like for the audience of See to take from the visuality of the show?

NB: Pay attention to the layers. Unfortunately, it’s filmed very darkly. It’s very sombre. Look at the costumes because there’s so many subtle symbolisms. For example, the crazy queen, I gave her the colour of bright blood because she killed so many people, that blood- gets darker & darker in the season, and then all of a sudden, it looked like it washed out at the very end when she was strapped to the bed, because she had no power left and she was pregnant. She had a nightgown on that looked like someone had washed out curtains of blood. It was a strange, dried orange colour, faded, splotchy. There are so many of those kinds of symbols in the show and it’s very layered.

You have to really look at the costumes. Not one thing is on there by accident, everything has a reason. I stayed up many nights, I’d wake and have an idea, and it would be implemented somewhere. The other thing I could do with the queens, my favourite designers are Balenciaga and Schiaparelli, even Dior and Jacques Fath…. I would take some of their shapes and morph them into this world. That was a lot of fun too. For example, the capes on the Trivantian army are actually a very early Dior cape design and I made it into the army capes, the way it was folded in the back and the neck. That’s why nothing is there by accident.

Deconstructing Dystopia

PREV ARTICLE

Make-up and Character: The Making of The Souvenir Part I and II

NEXT ARTICLE

Beyond the Birthday Suit