A thread of respect

Deborah NADOOLMAN LANDIS, the leading character in the contemporary drama “Costume Designers Don’t Get No Respect,� sits at one of the small tables lining the sidewalk outside Il Fornaio in Beverly Hills. She can barely be heard above the roar of passing traffic and the chatter of late lunchers, yet as she leans forward to make a point in this imaginary movie, her intensity transmits clearly, filling the frame.

“Our craft is marginalized and trivialized,� she says. “It’s misunderstood. It is perceived as a job of shopping, when what we do is really all about character. We’re storytellers.�

Landis successfully ran for president of the Costume Designers Guild three years ago because she was tired of hearing her colleagues complain. They gripe about producers who think their talents lie in procuring name-brand freebies, including designer duds that probably won’t be seen on screen. They cringe when the press ignores their work then showers publicity on fashion designers who’ve provided a gown or two for a film.

They grouse about stars who treat them like the help. They’re livid when they’re confused with -- bite your tongue -- stylists, shoppers who lack the experience and skill of costume designers. They deplore that they’re paid less than other creative contributors to films and condemn the practice of being denied merchandising royalties, even when their designs are reproduced line for line. But most of all, they beef about not getting respect.

Writers have long assumed the role of most-disgruntled group in Hollywood. They need to move over. “Costume designer is probably the most underappreciated job on a movie set,� director Gary Ross says.

That’s what Landis is working to change. “I’m the tallest, so I volunteered to be the leader,� Landis jokes. “Everyone could get behind me.� If all the costume designers in Local 892 did literally get behind Landis, nearly 600 women and 60 men who work in film and television would queue up. Their leader stands 6 feet tall and seems to take up even more space when her thick, salt-and-pepper mane curls up and out or when she rants about how smart and talented and abused today’s costume designers are.

On this afternoon, she wears an orange cabled crewneck, tan cargo pants, orange driving shoes and understated jewelry. “In every contemporary film, what a character wears is a combination of things,� she says. “The pieces will be custom-made, or altered. Even if they were bought off the rack, they will be fit, they will be aged. We’re punished for our virtuosity. When costume design is good, you don’t notice it. Everyone knows there are costumes in ‘Shakespeare in Love.’ But what we do supports the narrative of contemporary films too.�

It’s just clothes

Everyone has to get dressed every day, so we all think we understand clothing. And the producer’s girlfriend likes to shop. How hard could it be to dress a movie star? Ask Judianna Makovsky. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama with a background in theater, a sterling list of film credits and three Academy Award nominations, she is typical of the current crop of top-tier designers who have a sense of their worth. “She is astoundingly knowledgeable about her craft,� says Ross, with whom she collaborated on “Big,� “Pleasantville� and “Seabiscuit.�

“For ‘Seabiscuit,’ we were dressing 700 people for every big racetrack scene,� Makovsky says. “A producer asked, ‘Can’t you just go out and rent the costumes?’ �

No, she couldn’t, no more than she could borrow Quidditch uniforms for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.�

“We wanted ‘Seabiscuit’ to tell the tale of America in the 1930s, which meant showing people in all walks of life,� she explains. “The clothes we needed ... just aren’t around anymore. You always have to make more costumes than anyone thinks.�

Makovsky got her first solo movie credit when production and costume designer Santo Loquasto, who had hired her as his assistant, decided he didn’t want to do both jobs on “Big� and told her, “I’ll just do the sets and you do the costumes. Have a movie.�

Until recently, costume designers were typically more competitive than collegial. When they’re isolated on location in Prague, Vancouver or Auckland for months at a time, it can be difficult to share information or feel very invested in a common cause. Landis has encouraged solidarity and has effectively coerced, charmed and provoked her fellow designers into speaking up for themselves. With rallying cries such as “We hang together or we hang separately,� Landis can sound as if she’s speaking lines from a melodrama about the birth of the American labor movement.

The designers guild invited agents to round tables and organized committees to look into creative-rights issues. Seven years ago, they inaugurated an annual costume designers awards banquet. Armed with a PhD in costume design and a resume that includes “Raiders of the Lost Ark,� Landis began teaching courses on her craft for filmmakers at the USC film school and the American Film Institute this year. “First-time directors go straight from film school to a big studio picture,� she says. “They’ve never seen a costume designer. I hope if they learn what it is we do, they’ll value it.�

Buoyed by the guild’s activist spirit, Makovsky is open about the stands she takes against attitudes in the industry that she deems insulting. “If I know an actress intends to bring a stylist in on a movie, I won’t do the film,� she says. “I let the director know up front that if that happens, he’ll be replacing me. I’m the designer of the movie. I think we have to be strong about it. I go into a film now saying that this is the way I work. This is the reason my films look the way they do. If everyone asks for the same things, that will become the norm.

“There’s an idea in the business that what we do is easy. A lot of that is because our field is mostly women and gay men.�

Sexism in Hollywood? Say it isn’t so! “Women and shopping,� one designer says. “You put those two things together and we must be idiots.� But slowly, they’re gaining support. Now, when a producer calls a costume designer a “ragpicker,� he might find that the agent on the other end of the phone has hung up.

ICM Executive Vice President Paul Hook, who represents film editors, cinematographers, and production and costume designers, says, “It isn’t that costume designers don’t want money, but what I mostly hear them say is they want to be respected.�

Respect and remuneration form an unbroken circle: If the job that designers do was more appreciated, they’d get more money. If their pay was higher, respect would follow. A top production designer makes $10,000 to $12,000 a week, and star cinematographers get $25,000 to $30,000. A costume designer of the same caliber won’t be paid more than $9,000. At every level, there’s normally a gap of several thousand dollars separating production designers and costume designers. “The perception is that the blueprint is more important than the costume sketch and the hammer is more important than the needle,� Landis says. “What’s perceived as harder to do? It’s yin and yang. We’re the soft goods and production design is the hard goods.�

The winner of three Academy Awards for costume design, James Acheson has also worked as a production designer. “Costume designer is a much more labor-intensive job,� he says. “And scenery doesn’t talk back to you.�

Different directors have conflicting views of which jobs are most valuable to the filmmaking process -- does how a movie is shot or what’s in the frame matter more? Whatever the answer -- and, of course, there is no answer -- until recently, the tradition of minimum salaries for costume designers being less than those of cinematographers, editors and production designers wasn’t questioned. Because, after all, it’s just clothes.

Star wars

The late Richard Harris had signed to play Albus Dumbledore in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,� but early on he hadn’t figured out the Hogwarts School headmaster. Makovsky says when she showed him her sketch of Dumbledore’s flowing robes, he said, “Oh, that’s who I am. Thank you.�

In the best of times, costume designers and actors are artistic allies. “Often, we’re the first people to talk about character with an actor,� says Deena Appel, who designed the three “Austin Powers� movies. “We’re talking about where the character’s mind is, the character arc, about how best to articulate the character with costumes, not about what is pretty. We are designing a look to not only serve the story, but to camouflage every flaw an actor has, when that’s warranted. When someone needs to reveal flaws, then we’re skilled at that.�

Unfortunately, it is not always the best of times on a movie set. Stars have reservoirs of power substantial enough to overwhelm even the directors and producers who hire them.

“A brilliant, very experienced costume designer will say, ‘This shirt doesn’t get tucked in,’ and the movie star will tell them, ‘No, we’re going to tuck it in.’ It’s outrageous, especially when directors won’t stand up to them,� says Hook, the ICM agent.

“There are actors who don’t understand our job, or don’t really care,� says designer Michael Kaplan. “I don’t even want to call them actors, because most people who are really into what it is to be an actor have a respect for collaboration.� Many designers could tell horror stories about movie stars run amok, but if they told you their names, they’d have to kill you. A costume designer who has had successful collaborations with a number of major stars was initially excited about working on a thriller with a beautiful blond sex symbol.

“Things turned sour very quickly,� he says, “when I realized she had determined what she was going to wear long before we had our first meeting. I’m open to people’s ideas. But I don’t want to be dictated to at this point in my career. They didn’t need me. They just needed a gofer. At the first fitting, she showed up with a stylist, and she talked to her as if I wasn’t even in the room. It was really unprofessional.�

Stylists, on the other hand, really are shoppers, with a feel for image management and an eye for fashion. They help celebrities look their best for public appearances and magazine layouts. In goody-bag land, where stuff -- especially clothes -- often comes without a price tag, producers see both personal and financial advantages to bringing a stylist on board who has access to the fashion industry’s largess.

Many costume designers are offended when producers focus on freebies. Do they ask a stunt coordinator if he can arrange to get stunts gratis? With fantasies of donated clothes in mind, a producer might hire a stylist, forgetting that running a costume department requires the acumen needed to operate a small business -- budgets must be made and kept, crews hired and supervised, special items outsourced. And always, deadlines must be met, even if roles are cast at the last minute and production schedules change. Many is the time a director who hired a stylist to do a movie later begged a costume designer to bail him out.

The fashion designer juggernaut

Landis is a passionate letter writer, though her notes are seldom romantic. She writes to journalists who wax poetic about a movie’s costumes but fail to acknowledge the person who created them.

When high-profile fashion designers are involved with a film, they are invariably at the center of publicity, even if their contribution is minimal compared to the work of the costume designer. Makovsky didn’t have a large budget on the 1998 remake of “Great Expectations.� “I approached Donna Karan’s company to get some free clothes for Gwyneth Paltrow,� she says. “They were very generous and gave us six or seven outfits, but that was it. Everything else I designed. I never met Donna Karan, she never had anything to do with the film.� The headline of a New York Times story on the movie was “The Title Is From Dickens, the Look From Donna Karan.�

Since then, Makovsky won’t work on a movie if a fashion designer is involved. “It was the studio and the film’s publicists and the press who blew up Donna Karan’s contribution,� she says. “What the costume designer does is demeaned. I interviewed for a film and when the director said, ‘We’ve already contacted Ralph Lauren, Versace and Armani,’ I said, ‘Well, I hope they have a good time standing on the set 17 hours a day, because I won’t be there.’ �

The disproportionate amount of publicity given fashion designers who contribute to a movie could be seen as pragmatic -- a well-known brand name can be a marketing device. But many costume designers feel there’s a more insidious explanation: the misperception that fashion design is the highest calling for anyone working with clothes.

Kaplan’s costumes for “Blade Runner,� “Flashdance� and “Fight Club� set fashion trends, but that outcome was not on his mind initially. “Fashion design is different than what we do,� he says. “It’s about creating a look for the masses that people will go out and buy. Costume design is very specific and is about making characters come alive.�

Sometimes an actress is the culprit. Fashion designers send stars free clothes, fly them to Europe for their shows, pay their hotel bills and design exclusive gowns to be worn on the red carpet and off. One way celebrities show their gratitude is by paying tribute in interviews. When promoting “De-Lovely� on TV, Ashley Judd praised the gowns from the Armani archives she wore in the film. Elizabeth Hurley gushed to reporters about her Versace wardrobe for “Bedazzled.� Perhaps the actresses just forgot to mention that costume designers Janty Yates and Appel, respectively, created most of their costumes.

No gravy for you

Working in Hollywood offers the promise of being involved in a blockbuster, a once-in-a-blue-moon phenomenon that could be called the “My Big Fat Greek Wedding� syndrome. When the moon does shine big and blue, costume designers don’t financially benefit because, according to their contracts, their creations are “work for hire,� wholly owned by the production company or studio.

Knowing that some other creative contributors profit from a hit movie’s commercial afterlife makes many costume designers feel like neglected stepchildren. The way they see it, Halloween costumes, dolls, action figures and board games spun off a film sell well, to some extent, because they echo a costume designer’s vision. Try putting an image of Austin Powers in jeans and a sweatshirt on a lunch box and see if they fly off the shelves.

Inequities that are common practice within the industry defy logic. Although residuals for costume designers are paid to their union local and go into a general health insurance fund, individual designers don’t collect from film and TV projects they’ve worked on the way other creative collaborators do.

“A lot of things aren’t fair,� says Fred Baron, executive vice president of Fox Studios. “It’s not fair that the production coordinator makes less than the driver.�

If a song written for a film is used in a car commercial, the composer is paid for the use of his music. But if Keanu Reeves skulks through the ad clad in a distinctive long, black coat, Kym Barrett, who designed the costumes for “The Matrix� trilogy, isn’t compensated. When music is written specifically for a movie, a composer isn’t quite doing work for hire. Composers retain rights to their music and receive royalties on soundtrack sales. Costume designers maintain that Halloween costumes, just like soundtracks, are ancillary products spun off a film.

“The concept that designers’ work is work for hire is a valid legal concept,� says Wayne Fitterman, a UTA agent who represents below-the-line talent. “However, when they start exploiting the creative designs of a costume designer beyond the primary distribution of the film, then the argument could be made that that’s not the work that was hired. This is a very difficult topic for the studios to wrap their heads around, because they’ve made a lot of money without having to cut in a lot of participants. It’s a matter of changing the corporate culture over time.�

During production of “The Lord of the Rings� trilogy, Academy Award-winning designer Ngila Dickson found the demands made on her time annoying. “You’re barraged by the merchandising people to give them acres of information, swatches of fabric and sketches and written descriptions of costumes, which is far away from the job you’re actually paid to do,� Dickson says.

Studios argue that costume designers certainly don’t deserve a share of merchandising when characters existed in another medium before being brought to life on screen. “Even with comic book characters,� Appel says, “the costume helps bring the character to life. The character sells the doll. Having the doll makes kids want to own the DVD. The DVD makes them want to see the sequel.� Acheson, who designed “Spider-Man� and “Daredevil,� says, “It would be lovely to think that because one worked on something that’s made billions of dollars, there’s real acknowledgment that you contributed to that success. I have a nice relationship with the marketing people, but it’s too bad they can’t send a few more free samples of the toys.�

Some directors and producers reward their creative team by sharing their back-end participation, giving half a point to the editor, half a point to the costume designer, and so on. Eddie Murphy famously dubbed net participation “monkey points,� because by the time the studio, stars, the director, producers, writers, etc., collect the millions they’re contractually awarded from gross earnings, there’s nothing left for anyone standing farther back in line. “Even if directors give away net points and the creative team will never see anything, it’s a nice gesture,� Baron says. “Everyone likes to get thanked.�

It’s easy to understand why no one’s eager to slice up the profit pie. Why costume designers have to struggle for recognition is more mystifying. “We don’t want to be invisible,� Landis says. “Acknowledge the designer, so it’s clear that costumes don’t design themselves. They don’t spring from the collective unconscious.�

You can buy a “Legally Blonde 2� Barbie doll, dressed in a Pepto-Bismol pink suit and pillbox hat just like the one Sophie de Rakoff designed for Reese Witherspoon to wear in the movie. But if you want to find De Rakoff’s name on the box, you’ll have to turn it upside down. Having her name printed on even the bottom flap of the package was a milestone that came about only because she asked for credit and was backed by Witherspoon and the film’s producer, who proposed the idea to Mattel.

“It was the first time a costume designer’s gotten credit on any merchandising,� de Rakoff says. “I’m delighted, because of the precedent it sets for other designers. It would have been really tacky for them to have dressed the doll in that outfit and not given me credit, but that’s what we’ve all been so disgusted by before.�

Costume designers have had to insist that their names be included among the technical credits in advertisements, on DVDs and soundtracks, although some studios have been more willing than others. Warner Bros., the most recalcitrant, will now put some designers in the billing block. The decision is somewhat random and depends on whether a designer has gotten such credit before, whether the producer and director back them, whether they’ve won Academy Awards.

But awards can be a difficult criterion. Contemporary movies have been honored only twice since 1967. Period films win nominations and awards year after year, bolstering the notion that the most admirable costume design is the most elaborate and obvious. Are the costumes Jeffrey Kurland created for “Erin Brockovich� any less important to that film than those in “Gladiator,� which won Yates an Oscar that year?

Lysistrata’s daughters

Neither costume designers nor their representatives worry that they might suffer from biting the hands that feed them. “We have nothing to lose at this point,� Landis says. “We couldn’t make less. There are many difficult, demanding people in the business who still work all the time because they’re talented.�

Things will change, she says, when individual designers in great demand turn down jobs if they aren’t satisfied with the deals they’re offered. “We all complain to each other, but no one is willing to walk away from a project. Ultimately, we have to say, ‘No,’ which is scary.�

The power of no is the most potent weapon the designers have. If they continue to use it, “Costume Designers Don’t Get No Respect� won’t be an apt title for their story. “Lysistrata’s Daughters� might work, though.