I had the privilege of talking with the renowned costume designer Karen Patch about her work on the hit film Bride Wars, out in theaters now, starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. Karen pulled jewelry for the film through LupRocks.com so I was anxious to learn about the overall process of dressing a star cast:
M.O. In “Bride Wars” the characters really do a number on one another to try to ruin the other one’s wedding! How did that figure into your choice of dresses?
K.P. I worked with Vera Wang on the dresses, and I really had to work backwards from how they looked destroyed to how they looked in the beginning. I needed to make sure there was enough there to destroy; tear the tulle off, rip the sash off, twist the whole body around, so that they appeared to be really tearing into each other. For Anne’s dress I didn’t change much, but for Kate’s dress, I doubled the size of the train and the skirt, and I changed the color and the fabric, and now it’s part of Vera’s permanent collection.
M.O. How do you source out the wardrobes for your casts? Do you attend fashion shows, read lots of magazines, do lots of personal shopping?
K.P. (laughs) Yes, the answer is yes to all of those things. I’m in showrooms, and I go to retail stores, and I read tons of magazines and I just know what’s out there so I can narrow it down to, say, the Dolce looks good, the Hugo Boss looks good, Marc Jacobs looks good, Channel looks good, Philip Lim blouses look good this season, so you’re starting to build from labels you already know for yourself. For jewelry, I will always go to LupRocks.com first. If I can work with small places and emerging designers I definitely do. If that company is excited about working with the particular actor, it makes life easier. And everybody wants to work with Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway so that’s kind of ideal. They are both beautiful and young and at the top of their games and everything they wear is going to be seen and examined and copied.
M.O. What are some of your considerations when choosing the jewelry?
With jewelry it’s a lot more personal. I’ll put everything I’ve selected as options for them on trays and we’ll sit down and look at the jewelry together. For the wedding, they both wanted something simple, not only because they didn’t want to detract from the wedding gown, but also because when you’re in a scene with a fight you want to do things that are simple, so sometimes practicality is involved. For each costume, they have their jewelry tray with the jewelry that’s chosen for the entire film, and the tray goes into the room with the costumes and they will pick off the tray. In effect, they have their own jewelry box and, just like you probably do each morning, they’ll tend to gravitate towards the same pieces.
M.O. So at the end of the day, are you happy with how the film turned out?
K.P. Yes, I’m very happy with how it looks. It looks like “my” film, and I don’t know what that is actually, but I know it looks good! It looks kind of rich in a way but at the same time, it looks believable.