Getting Back in the Trench Coats with the ‘The Crow’ (2024) Costume Designers
Based on James O’Barr’s supernaturally successful comic series of the same name, The Crow franchise has always had a very specific look and feel, its gothic storyline further fueled by its aesthetic. The title character’s dark, dank wardrobe, in particular, has been one of the property’s main throughlines, carrying over from the original comics and films to the short-lived TV series and beyond.
Considering this visual legacy, you can imagine the challenges costume design duo Kurt and Bart (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay films, Black Adam, Stoker) came up against while styling Rupert Sanders’ new adaptation of The Crow. Speaking with Dread Central ahead of the film’s August 23 release, the team detailed strategies for honoring The Crow we know (and love), while also bringing the antihero (played here by Bill Skarsgård) and his beloved Shelly (FKA twigs) into the modern-day movie landscape.
THE NEW TRENCH COAT
It’s hard to think of The Crow without conjuring up images of floor-length outerwear, with a variation of the long coat silhouette seen on every version of Eric Draven (or just Eric, as he’s known in this latest adaptation). So, naturally, Kurt and Bart had to do their own twist on the look.
“We actually ended up turning it inside out,” Bart says. “It was a nod to deconstruction motifs of designers like Margiela and also felt like it made sense for the character, [who is] literally tormented and inside out.”
It all started when Kurt and Bart were looking into vintage top coats and military trenches. As Bart explains, “The construction and details are amazing and especially the coat interiors, the linings and construction details. We really got excited about showing all of that.”
“The tricky part was integrating that inside-out coat into the storyline,” Kurt explains. “When he first tries on the coat with Shelly, she removes it and it falls to the ground inside out. After Shelly’s death, he finds the coat and puts it on. The coat, for us, really became a symbol of their love and also is ultimately his armor in his quest for revenge.”
In order to make this version of The Crow really, well, fly, in the film’s fight scenes, Kurt and Bart split the coat up the sides, leaving the waist belts and arm straps to hang loose. “We wanted it to move like wings,” Bart says.
“On our first coat fit with Bill, he crouched down on the floor and the coat splayed perfectly into almost a crow’s silhouette,” Kurt adds. “The sheen of the waxed black fabric and the shimmer of iridescent purple in the lining also brought that literal beauty of the bird into the garment.”
STYLING SHELLY
In addition to working with a fictional character with a fashionable history, Kurt and Bart had to create new looks for a real-life style icon: triple-threat FKA twigs.
“Twigs is incredible and has covered a lot of ground stylistically,” Kurt says. “We did want to strip her down a bit and also show a bit of high and low as she comes from money in the story, but obviously is her own person with incredible street style.”
The major influences for styling Shelly were people who “create their own ideals of beauty,” much like twigs. More specifically, they looked back at the punk girls they hung out with in the 1980s who “stomped around in combat boots, thrifted vintage petticoats, bloomers, and ripped tees,” as well as artists Nina Hagen, Patti Smith, and Siouxsie Sioux. You know, “brash, artistic types mixing thrift, found, cut up or threadbare with lots of attitude and style.”
As for the scenes in which Shelly is seen underwater, Kurt and Bart pulled inspiration from one of the divas of the sea.
“We really wanted to replicate the beauty of a jellyfish,” Kurt explains. “We added a custom jacket made from a vintage military silk parachute with lots of straps that just undulated beautifully in the water.”
A PASTEL GOTH MOMENT
While mainly staying true to the traditional gothic roots of The Crow, Kurt and Bart did add some more color to Eric’s closet this time around, as seen in some of the early scenes before the aforementioned tragedy that sets the story in motion.
Bart describes the palette of these lovelorn moments as “bruise-y” tones (think “dark blues and purples”) mixed in with “faded roses and blush.” Meanwhile, the latter parts of the film are filled with blacks and purples “with splashes of blood.”
“We wanted something bold and the complete opposite of where we end up,” Kurt adds. “I guess it could represent their love, the hope, and excitement of meeting someone you connect with in a place that’s smothering you.”
This pastel goth moment seems absolutely in line with how the duo views the story and the character holistically. To quote Bart, “The Crow has always been an outsider’s love story to me, beautiful and sad. Eric is an outsider, a creative and wounded soul, and he finds love and loss in equally beautiful and horrifying measure.”
Categorized:Interviews
