Twenty-five years ago, Baz Luhrmann laid his scene in fair Verona – and it was like nothing we’d ever seen before. The Australian auteur’s kaleidoscopic reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic romance, Romeo + Juliet, was a brash thrill ride through the streets of some combination of Venice Beach, Mexico City, and Miami, populated by god-fearing gangsters and glamazons. At the centre of it all were two career-defining performances from a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the star-crossed lovers, their mesmerising chemistry making for a love story that has stayed in the hearts of millennials ever since.
DiCaprio and Danes weren’t the only reasons the film became such a cult classic, however. Yes, there was its iconic soundtrack – Des’ree’s “I’m Kissing You” remains the ultimate karaoke tearjerker – but also the flamboyant costuming. From Mercutio’s glitzy lingerie set and cape as he belted out “Young Hearts Run Free” at the Capulet party, to Juliet’s ethereal angel wings, to the flaming sacred heart on the Hawaiian shirt worn by Romeo in the opening scenes on Verona Beach, these are looks that haven’t just become a part of cinematic history, but fashion history too. (The latter style in particular has never been far from a menswear catwalk over the last 25 years.)
For that, we have the Australian costume designer Kym Barrett to thank. A contemporary of Luhrmann and his wife, Catherine Martin, at art school in Sydney, she initially worked as a wardrobe assistant on the first extravaganza in their Red Curtain Trilogy, 1992’s Strictly Ballroom, before signing on to join the couple’s merry band as they began plotting their radical take on Shakespeare. “We were a very ragtag group and wanted to do stuff our own way, and we spent a lot of time working out not just what we wanted to do, but why we wanted to do it,” says Barrett of the collaborative spirit that underpinned the film’s making. “Some of it was luck, and some of it was just really hard work.”
It’s under the former category that Barrett slots her memorable collaborations with Dolce & Gabbana (for the young Capulets’ gunslinging leather waistcoats and cowboy belts), Prada (for DiCaprio’s dreamy wedding suit), and Yves Saint Laurent (for the razor-sharp tailoring and gowns worn by the elder generation’s mob bosses and wives). “That was a dream come true,” Barrett adds. Still, the bulk of the clothing was fabricated by Barrett’s team of pattern cutters and seamstresses, including those famous Hawaiian shirts, which were all painstakingly handpainted as riffs on a piece she picked up in a Miami thrift store.
In the years since, Barrett has gone on to become one of Hollywood’s most eminent costume designers, working on The Matrix trilogy later in the ’90s before moving on to projects as wide-ranging as From Hell, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Jordan Peele’s Us. All the same, Barrett looks back on shooting Romeo + Juliet as one of her fondest filmmaking memories. “It was definitely the job you want to have been your first job,” says Barrett. “It was unforgettable.”
Here, Barrett shares the story behind the costumes, from her eclectic range of references, to collaborating with Miuccia Prada on DiCaprio’s tailoring, to how she used clothes to bring Shakespeare’s romantic tale back to vivid, unforgettable life.
How did the project come your way, and what was your process in the early stages of conceiving the costumes?
Catherine and Baz and I all went to NIDA [the National Institute of Dramatic Art] in Sydney, so we already had that common ground. First, we made a short film with actors from Sydney in an abandoned lot – we dressed up our friends and shot the Mercutio death scene. And then Baz sent it to Leonardo and to Fox, and they decided to give us small amounts of money to start building up to the project that we wanted to do. We were kind of left on our own, and it just grew from there. Catherine, Baz, Craig [Pearce, screenwriter], and I went to Miami to do research, and Sony gave Baz one of those very first small movie cameras. So we made little video vignettes, and we edited it into what I guess you would call teasers. It was really a learning curve for all of us, but we just took our chances. We were only given $15 million, which is not much money for a movie. We prepped in Canada for a little while, and then we decided to shoot in Mexico City for most of it, so it was a culture shock as well, but also an incredible adventure.
It’s very impressive that it was your first job as a head costume designer. Did you ever feel nervous about embarking on such a bold and radical take on a story that’s so beloved?
We all came out of the theatre, and the job delineations aren’t as rigid as they are in films. You tend to do a bit of everything. We would get there in the morning and steam the curtains, or I’d stay late with Catherine and we’d paint the floor. Everyone is kind of an equal collaborator, and we all brought that same methodology to the way we made that film. I think you can see that, because it’s very cohesive and everything is integrated. You can follow the thought process from the writing to the directing style to the cinematography to the sets and costumes and music, and I think that’s one of the reasons it worked. Because obviously, we were working with what was essentially a kind of foreign language. Shakespeare isn’t a normal medium for film. I think we needed to be really solid with the vision and really tight, so that all the visuals supported the language and people could relax into it and understand what was happening. I think if you talk to most people who enjoy Shakespeare, the first time they start hearing it or reading it, they’re like, “What’s going on?” But if you just settle in and go with it, it starts to make complete sense to you. And that was one of the aims of doing the film. My job was to support the language with imagery, to help you stop thinking about the language and just go with the story. And I think it was successful in that way.
When it came to fabricating the costumes, how much of it did you produce in-house? And how did the collaborations with Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, and Yves Saint Laurent come about?
We made almost everything ourselves. The collaborations with the fashion houses were partly because we were strapped for cash. I had done a bunch of photoshoots in New York and met different people at different showrooms, and when I was thinking about how to design for the Capulets, I was like, well, Dolce & Gabbana is a great jumping-off point. So we struck a deal with them for them to give us old stock that we could use to populate Verona Beach, with all the gangs and the background people. I had this idea of really ornate waist vests that were bulletproof. I showed them those images, and they said, “Oh, we can pull some old stock for you that might be useful.” They came from the showroom with these big boxes of stuff, so the extras fittings were amazingly fun. Everybody loved it. We were able to bastardise some things – we chopped the sleeves off, or we over-dyed them to age them, or threw dirt on them. And then I needed a really beautiful suit for Leo when he got married, so we asked Ms Prada if she would agree to make a suit for him, and she said yes. We were very lucky. And then I had an amazing team in Mexico City, and my cutters and some of my seamstresses came from Montreal, and hair and make-up came from Italy. It was a really international crew – we had people from all over the world speaking all different languages. And that’s such a rich way to work on a creative project, you know? There was this really energetic tension.
What was the story behind the Capulet party costumes? I feel like all of them give a little backstory to each of the characters.
In the script, [Romeo] says, “Oh bright, bright, angel,” and I knew Catherine wanted Claire to be on the balcony, backlit and silhouetted with the twinkling fairy lights that look like stars. So I knew straight away what that was going to be. And then with Leonardo, he’s like Lancelot. He’s driven away from his own people, from everything he holds dear to him. It’s an echo of the knight in shining armour, only in this case, it doesn’t work out, of course. I wanted to have that duality of it being one of the greatest romances in the world, but also one of the most tragic. I didn’t want to bang people over the head with didactic imagery, but I did want there to be a subconscious connection to stories and myths. The ballroom party is populated with characters from Shakespeare: Lord Capulet is a Roman emperor and Lady Capulet is Cleopatra. Then Paul Rudd as Paris is a bit on the outside, and a bit of a space cadet, so an astronaut felt right. I always thought of him as floating out a bit beyond reality.
I’m also curious about that Hawaiian shirt – or should I say those, as there were two.
The Capulets definitely have that kind of gunslinging, gangster, low-hipped, cowboy-boots kind of vibe. And then the Montagues are more flyboy. They’re like the guys in Hawaii on leave from the ship. They’re still fighters, but they’re more laid-back and relaxed and American in a way. But both families are super religious, so it made sense that when I designed the shirts, they should have that kind of iconography painted in them. We had an amazing team of fabric painters in our department, and we designed the shirts to have all these different religious symbols embedded in them. Leo’s shirt at the end that he wears in the cathedral was definitely the inspiration and jumping-off point. I found it in a thrift store in Miami, and it already had this very dreamy, romantic Technicolor motif. Then there’s the one with the bleeding heart and the death lilies that the team painted. I chose the flowers as a foreshadowing of what was going to happen.
The film and its costumes still serve as a reference to fashion designers – and indeed creatives of all stripes – today. What has made it endure?
I think the reason it endures in fashion is that a lot of the people who are now heading up these fashion houses were in that age group 25 years ago. It was a new way of viewing Shakespeare, and I think whether consciously or subconsciously, it impacted people of that generation – especially the music, which was extremely evocative and emotional and carried the story. I think everything came together to serve the characters and made them memorable. Even if the storytelling was heightened, the characters were king. I always say to people that a costume isn’t anything without a person in it. It becomes something when the actor puts it on and becomes the character. And I think that’s why it resonates with people: it’s a testament to the enduring power of Shakespeare and his characters, and our ability to reinterpret them for our time. It was a film about two teenagers that was really made for that age group, and I’m still so proud of it. I’ve done a lot of films by now, and I still think it’s my favourite.
